Gas Prices Dip Below $2 in Some Cities

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 12:13PM EST · Published May 9, 6:40AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Gas Prices Dip Below $2 in Some Cities — © Thinkstock

[cnxvideo id=”655426″ placement=”ros”]The price for an average gallon of regular has dropped below $2 in some parts of the United States. In other areas, the price is barely a few pennies higher. It is part of a trend that has driven down gasoline prices nationwide for over a month. Oil prices also have fallen sharply over the same period.

The price of a gallon of gas nationwide is $2.34, down from $2.39 a month ago. However, prices vary widely. On a statewide basis, according to GasBuddy, the price of an average gallon of regular is $2.01 in Oklahoma, and the price continued to drop recently. At the other end of the spectrum, gas prices in Hawaii are $3.03 but also have dropped recently.

The cities where gas prices are below $2, or hovering just above that level, are in two states that traditionally have the lowest prices among them all: Oklahoma and South Carolina. The average price in Tulsa is $1.97 a gallon. The price in Greenville, South Carolina, is the same. The price in Oklahoma City is $1.98, while it is $1.99 in Spartanburg. The price is $2.01 in Columbia and $2.03 in Myrtle Beach.

Crude oil prices, the primary contributor to gas prices, have dropped from $53 a barrel a month ago to below $47. The trend continues to be downward and the per-barrel price dropped to just above $44 recently. Bloomberg has reported that oil could drop below $40 unless OPEC and other several other oil-producing nations extend their current export limits. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority’s head of research, Christof Ruehl, told the news agency: “If OPEC and the coalition don’t extend the agreement to continue cuts, that price floor will go. Without it, prices would fall, and there’s nothing to stop oil going below $40 a barrel.”

[nativounit]

Low gas prices in Oklahoma and South Carolina are also driven by low state taxes and levies. The American Petroleum Institute reports that the gas tax in South Carolina is the second lowest among all states at $0.352 a gallon. Oklahoma is third lowest at $0.354. The national average is $0.495. The state with the highest gas tax is Pennsylvania at $0.777. It is no accident that Pennsylvania is the state with the fifth highest gas price in the country at $2.60.

If the current trend in both gas and oil prices continues, gas prices will drop below $2 in a number of other cities. In some places, it is already nearly there.

[wallst_email_signup]

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.