OAK BROOK, Ill. -- Reports from around the country indicate that unleaded regular gasoline prices are again dipping below the $2 per gallon mark at a few retail outlets in some markets.
Nationwide, the average retail price of a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline was about $2.23 yesterday, compared with $2.30 last month, according to AAA.
Mild weather and falling demand for home heating oil has led to higher oil and gasoline inventories and pushed crude oil prices down, AAA spokesperson Jim Rink told The Detroit News. "As we get [image-nocss] closer to summer driving season, we'll see prices increase," he added.
Some observers speculated that gasoline prices could fall more. "Prices at the pump have only inched down, even though prices at the wholesale level have fallen down dramatically," James Cordier, president of Liberty Trading Group, Tampa, Fla., told the newspaper.
Just as prices typically rise in the summer when Americans drive more, gasoline usually costs less in January and February, Jason Schenker, an economist with Wachovia Corp., Charlotte, N.C., told The Columbus Dispatch. "Three years ago, we would have been [complaining] about paying $2. You just didn't expect to feel good to pay $2."
Here is a selection of reports from around the country:
Kansas
Friday, the price of a gallon of gasoline in Hutchison, Kansas, dipped below $2 for the first time since February, The Hutchinson News said.
Across the nation, Kansas ranked fifth for the lowest average price for regular grade gasoline, with two of its neighborsOklahoma and Missouriranked as the states with the cheapest fuel-pump price, the report said.
Michigan
On Sunday, the average price for a gallon of regular was $2.02 in Metro Detroit, down 17 cents from a month ago, reported The Detroit News. Local stations were touting prices as low as $1.80.
And gasoline was at $1.97 for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline at Nabil Ali's BP station in Flint, Mich., Friday night. "Every time our prices go down, everyone's happy and we sell more gas," he told The Flint Journal.
On the west side of Flint, prices were a little more than $2 a gallon Friday night, the report said.
New Mexico
At some Albuquerque, N.M., stations late last week, prices dropped below the $2 mark, Jeannie Chavez, spokesperson for AAA New Mexico, told The Santa Fe New Mexican, reaching $1.89 a gallon at one station.
Charley Brewer, a Santa Fe gas station owner, said the city's prices are below the national average and have been that way for a while. Some people have forecast that gasoline prices in Santa Fe will drop below $2 a gallon, but that is impossible to predict, Brewer told the paper. "I like it going down because I have to buy gas, too," he said.
Ohio
The price of a gallon of unleaded regular at some stations in the Columbus, Ohio, area could drop to about $1.80 in the next 30 days, Tom Kloza, chief analyst with the Oil Price Information Service, told The Columbus Dispatch.
Prices at several stations stretching from downtown to Merion Village appeared well on their way Sunday, when fuel was priced at $1.99 for a gallon of unleaded regular.
"We've had this pretty significant drop in oil prices, and gasoline hasn't done much," analyst Bill O'Grady with A.G. Edwards & Sons, St. Louis, told the paper. I think gasoline will catch up."
Low gasoline prices on Friday delighted consumers, but left some Springfield, Ohio, stations dry, as customers gathered in large numbers at the pumps, reported The Springfield News Sun.
Herjit Singh, Citgo's manager, told the paper that an unusually high demand due to the drop in prices caused his station to run out of regular unleaded by 1:10 p.m. He said the shortage would only last the 15 minutes it would take for a gasoline truck to arrive and refill his station.
While the majority of gas stations in all sectors of Springfield dropped their lowest grade prices to below $2 a gallon, the cheapest stations were on the east side of town. A Speedway advertised $1.91 a gallon and most of its neighbors checked in at $1.92. Throughout the rest of the city $1.98 and $1.96 were the norm.
And the Carlisle QuickMart in Walnut Creek, Ohio, was a busy place Friday morning, with people lining up as early as 5:00 a.m. to fill their vehicles with $1.99-a-gallon gasoline, said The Wooster Daily Record.
"It's not a gimmick. This is the real deal," owner Greg Yoder, who has owned the station since August 2005 and has built a reputation for having the lowest gas prices around, told the paper.
Thursday, the price at Yoder's pumps was $2.059. Yoder said he decided to drop the price to $1.999 Friday morning after he learned Thursday evening the price he pays for gasoline would be dropping again, continuing a trend Yoder said started in August, stopped for the holidays when prices increased, then picked back up at the first of the year.
Oklahoma
Tulsa, Okla., motorists saw gasoline prices drop below $2 a gallon Friday, said The Tulsa World. Many Tulsa retailers lowered the price of regular unleaded to $1.99 a gallon Friday, one day after crude oil closed at $51.88 a barrel, the lowest since May 2005. Last week, the dominant retail price in Tulsa was $2.09 a gallon.
"We're seeing lower prices in Oklahoma City, as well," Chuck Mai of AAA-Oklahoma told the paper. "We've got stations as low as $1.84." Barring a major disruption in supplies, pump prices in Tulsa and elsewhere may keep falling, he added.
Statewide, the price of regular unleaded is averaging $2.06 a gallon, down from $2.14 one month ago, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report.
Tennessee
The average price of regular unleaded gas in Tennessee is 13 cents below a year ago, with reports of some stations selling below $2 a gallon on Monday, said The Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Wisconsin
Motorists in Mukwonago, Wis., got a belated Christmas gift Friday when gasoline prices in the Milwaukee area dropped below $2 a gallon for the first time in nearly two years, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said.
The last time pump prices at the Mukwonago outlet were below $2 a gallon was in February 2005, said the report.
Industry representatives say crude oil prices have plummeted because the unseasonably mild winter has meant sluggish demand for heating oil, leaving petroleum suppliers anxious to unload overstocked inventories. "There's just more oil out there," Robert Bartlett, president of the Wisconsin Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association, told the paper.
Several stations in the Mukwonago area dropped to $1.99 a gallon, as well. Darwin Greenwald, owner of Mukwonago Express Mart and a couple of other outlets offering $1.99 prices Friday, admitted that he wanted to get a jump on the competition. After seeing customers turn grumpy with last summer's $3-a-gallon prices, Greenwald figured he could turn those frowns around by becoming one of the area's first station operators to go below $2. "It's just a level that we haven't seen in some time," he told the paper. "We were maybe a little aggressive."
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