he announced he s releasing 50 million gallons of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve to help lower some of the gas prices across the country, especially now that people are getting ready to travel for thanksgiving and christmas next month. the president insists the price of a gallon of gas will eventually drop. it s $3.40 today. charles, that s up from $2.10 last year at this time. the president just spoke at the white house about the economy. listen. moms and dads are worried, asking will there be enough food for the holidays. will we get christmas presents to the kids on time. if so, will they cost me an arm and a leg? i told you before that we re going to take action on these problems. that s exactly what we re doing. the president gave an example by touting his port action plan to help ease congestion, pick up
hours americans. right now the price at the pump is averaging $3.40 a gallon. shannon petty piece joins me from the white house. so the president expected to speak this afternoon. what they are blaming these high gas prices on a miss match between the supply being put out, and the demand that has been surging as the global economy starts coming back online during the pandemic, and they said to start bridging this divide, the supply, and meeting the demand, they re releasing 15 million barrels from a strategic reserve. it is mostly reserved for emergencied like a hurricane or if a pipeline goes off or if there is a disruption in the middle east where oil can t get in from those countries, so
on prices in the short and medium term. our expectation is that it will have a short term effect on prices. as a matter of fact, we already see that today, the international benchmark is up $1.20 so it s up 1.5% already. so it looks like the spr news was already priced in the market. here are the numbers on us petrol prices. according to the american automobile assocation, the average price for a gallon of petrol is $3.40. in states such as pennsylvania, california, and nevada, the price is higher. to put this in perspective, a year ago, that figure was $2.11 so over a 50% rise. let s hear from the energy analyst again. this $50 million of oil, as a matter of fact, 32 million of these barrels will be on the short term. so it means that they ll be releasing into the market in the next few weeks. and then, they will basically
confirmed that their shelves be well stocked in stores this holiday season. moms and dads worried about whether their christmas gifts will be a available. because from everything from bicycles to ice skates. i want to address another challenge. their loan they are more focused on. high gas prices. this is a problem, not just hear the united states and around the world. the price of gasoline has reached record levels recently in europe and asia. in france at the end of the last month, they reached about $7 per gallon. in japan it s about $5.50 per gallon. the highest it s been in years. of course it s always painful when gas prices spike. today the price of gas in america on average is $3.40 a gallon. in california, it s much higher. the impact is real. the fact is we have faced worse before.
and rather than saying, well, i can t really do very much, he s saying, you re right, i can do something but i think he s overpromising by pledging gas prices are going to go down, other price increases are going to go down when he doesn t have a magic wand he can wave. i just want to quickly show, matt, what gas prices have looked like in the past three or four years because if you let me pull up this graphic for a second. the red line is where we are, okay? yes, it s the highest it s been in years at $3.40. but if you look back, the green line is 2019. the yellow line is 2018. you know, a few months ago, they re all kind of intertwined there. right. by the way, that was before the pandemic. clearly, this is pandemic-related. right. absolutely. listen, gas was really cheap. we re talking about $2 gas in march, april of 2020, but no one could take advantage of it because the world was shut down because of covid. inflation, you know, food prices, air fare, hotels, all of those