Gas Prices Mysteriously Dip Ahead of Holiday

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 22, 6:11AM EST

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Demand is supposed to push gasoline prices higher as a holiday season approaches. The opposite is true this Thanksgiving week, and there is no ready explanation.

The AAA Fuel Gauge shows the price for a gallon of regular averaged $3.34 yesterday, based on a national average. A week earlier, the number was $3.411.

Oil prices have risen during the past two months. Normally, gas prices move higher when that happens. But the cost of oil prices has to pass through refiners to retailers, which can take weeks. Any impact from $95 crude may not appear before Christmas.

Most estimates of car travel for the Thanksgiving weekend indicate that miles driven in the U.S. will increase 3% to 5%. That level of demand should be another reason for station owners to take an opportunity to get more per gallon. That has not happened. Again, there is no ready reason.

Drivers will not get off lightly everywhere this holiday season. In some places, prices are still above $3.48 or more for a gallon of regular — the highest tier of national prices in the AAA study. Many people will pay this higher price because the most expensive gas is concentrated in California, New York and a few other areas. Those two states are the largest by population. Between them they are home to 20% of U.S. citizens.

Gas prices have dropped the week of Thanksgiving, compared to those the last few weeks. The reason is a mystery.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.