Gasoline Prices Continue to Fall

The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the US reached $3.29/gallon on Sunday. That’s $0.15/gallon less than a month ago, even though crude oil prices have remained right around $100/barrel.

“The deep rate of unemployment has sent demand down,” Trilby Lundberg, editor of the Lundberg survey, told Reuters. “It is the work commute that creates most of our gasoline demand.”

Last week’s drop in the unemployment rate to 8.6% is not likely to make a very large difference in demand for gasoline. US demand for gasoline has fallen from about 9.6 million barrels/day several years ago to about 8.8 million barrels/day currently. The US is even a net exporter of gasoline now.

In the continental US, the lowest gasoline price is about $2.96/gallon in New Mexico, according to gasbuddy.com. The highest price is in California, where a gallon of regular gasoline costs $3.63. A year ago, the US average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was about $2.94.