US consumers have seen lower gas prices at the pump, despite rising tensions in the Middle East. Another potential curveball could for oil and gasoline prices could be the 2024 elections. OPIS Global Head of Energy Analysis Tom Kloza,joins Yahoo Finance to give insight into the ongoing situations abroad, as well as how the current and future administrations could affect oil production domestically.

Kloza comments: "The White House, whether you want to criticize them or not, they're laser focused on gasoline prices. I think they're gonna be laser focused on gasoline prices in battleground states, places like Arizona, maybe Colorado, Nevada, or whatever. The problem is you're going to see higher prices this year: Arizona, California, and the Pacific Northwest, and maybe a few Rocky Mountain states. So it's going to be a problem all year."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

- Well, thinking about where we are ending the year right now, specifically with respect to the next year, it's an election year. The SPR in particular, that's the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, has become a total political football. But how do you see politics and the rhetoric that surrounds an election year influencing oil prices this next year?

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TOM KLOZA: Well, you look at it and the White House, whether you want to criticize them or not, they're laser focused on gasoline prices. And I think they're going to be laser focused on gasoline prices in battleground states. Places like Arizona, maybe Colorado, Nevada, or whatever. The problem is you're going to see higher prices this year Arizona, California, the Pacific Northwest, and maybe a few Rocky Mountain states.

So it's going to be a problem all year. I tend to believe that gasoline prices are going to peak in the second and third quarter, and they're going to be about where they were last year. But the big, big threat is that the United States Gulf of Mexico now is second only to the Strait of Hormuz in terms of a choke point for crude and refined products. We export and some days 11 to 12 million barrels a day of various hydrocarbons.

So the administration has to hope that they're lucky in terms of hurricanes. And other people might say we're doomed. The last major hurricane, I believe, was Ida in 2021. So we've been about three or four years without a significant impact.

- Do you believe that the worst, and perhaps the impact that energy prices have had on the inflation and the inflation combating that the Fed has been underway with, that the worst of that is behind us or is there still a larger outsized factor that still has yet to play itself out?