U.S. gasoline prices have dropped by $0.10 since Thanksgiving and are set to fall further until Christmas, although the holiday prices could be close to the highest Christmas gasoline prices on record, Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at fuel-savings platform GasBuddy, said on Thursday.
"Santa came early this year, delivering lower gas prices just in time for Christmas with the national average price of gasoline down 10 cents per gallon since Thanksgiving," De Haan said.
As of December 16, the national average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.316, according to data from AAA.
Last week, U.S. gasoline prices finally started to fall after the major correction in international crude oil prices at the end of November driven by fears of the new COVID variant, Omicron.
Yet, gasoline prices in America are still much higher than at this time last year, when a gallon of regular gasoline sold for an average of $2.158.
"More declines coming. $3.29/gal should happen in the next few days," De Haan said on December 6.
On Thursday, De Haan projected that the national average on Christmas was set to decline to $3.25 per gallon from today's $3.32.
Despite the recent drop in prices, gasoline is more than $1 more expensive than the average for last year.
This Christmas, gasoline prices in America will be lower than the Thanksgiving prices, but they are expected to be very close to the all-time high for Christmas of $3.26 per gallon in 2013, according to GasBuddy.
The fuel-savings platform expects this Christmas gasoline prices at $3.25 per gallon, a cent below the record high of 2013 and on par with the second-highest price of 2012. To compare, gasoline prices during the Christmas of 2020 were $2.25 per gallon.
"Just a penny away from 2013's Christmas tally of $3.26 per gallon, the priciest Christmas on record, there remains a chance prices in 2021 could still land just above the previous Christmas record," GasBuddy said.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
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