The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States saw a weekly fall for the first time this year, GasBuddy said in a Monday note, to $3.44 per gallon on Sunday.
The national average gasoline price fell 4.4 cents per gallon from a week ago, based on GasBuddy’s 11 million price reports spanning 150,000 gas stations across the nation. The average gasoline price is still up 17.5 cents from a month ago, and 1.7 cents per gallon up from the same time last year.
Diesel prices have also fallen, by 5.2 cents last week, reaching $4.60 per gallon.
A price drop for gasoline this time of year is not surprising.
“While the decline in both gasoline and diesel prices is terrific, it’s not unusual to see prices falling in February, which tends to be the month with some of the lowest gasoline prices of the year thanks to seasonally weak demand. For diesel, we’re likely to see more declines, and potentially much more significant ones in the weeks ahead as imports of distillate have accelerated, leading to a sell-off. And, with warmer weather ahead, demand may struggle as well. However, especially for gasoline, high levels of coming maintenance and the eventual transition to summer gasoline could lead today’s declines to reverse down the road. For now, motorists should enjoy the decline, but be wary as we’re likely to eventually see increases again down the road,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at Gas Buddy said.
The high gasoline price decline comes as the price of crude oil declines as well. The WTI benchmark was trading down $0.40 per barrel on Monday as of 11:30 a.m. ET, to $72.99—a 0.55% loss on the day, and a steep $5 dip from this time last week.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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