GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan tells American Family News the yearly national average for 2021 was $3.02 a gallon.
"So we're expecting an increase in the yearly national average," he continues. "More specifically, we would expect a price increase in the first half of the year before prices then start moderating in the second half of 2022."
Some drivers could see gas at $4.00 a gallon by Memorial Day.
When making a forecast, GasBuddy looks at dozens of impacts that feed into supply and demand.
"COVID is heavily influencing some of those factors," says De Haan. "It's a very complex string of dozens of different impacts and out of that trying to determine the most likely scenario of those balanced impacts to predict where we see gas prices in the year ahead."
On Wednesday, December 29, 2021, AAA had the national average for regular at $3.28 -- up from $2.25 a gallon this time last year.
