Gasoline retailers had a banner year in 2022, earning $59.2 billion nationwide, surpassing the prior record by almost $15 billion. A study by Lundberg Survey, which provides statistical reports to the oil industry, found that retail margins surged in July and onward, following President Joe Biden’s drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).
A year of volatile swings in the price of oil has turned out to be quite the boon for many of the big gasoline companies.
Retail gas providers grossed on average $0.171 per gallon sold for the decade ended in 2019 and only $0.101 in the decade prior to that. In the early part of 2022, as sanctions against Russia increased oil prices and squeezed retailers, margins fell to as low as $0.135 per gallon….