Sliding gas price drops off a ledge

I concluded Driving update for October 2013: My car and gas prices with a note about gas prices.

In other driving related news, the price of regular at the corner station dropped to $3.36 Monday while the three stations down the street held steady at $3.39, where they were at the time of the previous report, when I promised to fill up both cars.  I did, my wife's on Saturday and mine on Sunday.  The corner station is still selling gas at that price, but I don't know if the three other neighborhood stations have joined it.  Just the same, the sound you hear is that of continued sliding.

When I drove past them, they had.  Then on Thursday, the corner station had dropped its price to $3.27.  Today, I saw that the three stations down the street had joined the corner station again.  That's twice in one week that the corner station wins a battle in the gas war by dropping its price.

Normally, I'd check the Gasbuddy widget over at Econobrowser, but Gasbuddy.com is down right now.  Instead, I'll use AAA's Fuel Gauge to report that the national average is $3.37 and the Michigan average is $3.36.  No Detroit average is available at that site.

I'll offset that annoying loss of information by quoting more news from AAA by way of Bloomberg and the San Diego Union-Tribune: AAA EXPECTS 3-YEAR LOW IN GAS PRICES BY YEAR-END.

Americans probably will be paying the lowest prices for gasoline since January 2011 by Christmas, with some drivers filling up for less than $3 a gallon.

Prices may drop 25 cents to 30 cents by Dec. 25, Michael Green, a spokesman in Washington for AAA, said in a telephone interview last week.

The U.S. headed into October with the lowest seasonal pump prices since 2010. The average cost for a gallon of regular gasoline on Thursday was $3.38, according to AAA, the nation’s largest motoring club.

A decline of 30 cents a gallon would save consumers an average of about $3.36 a week, or $174.72 a year, according to data from Michael Sivak of the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. Cheaper gas prices could bring relief to drivers as the U.S. economy recovers from the worst slump since the 1930s.

“Barring significant disruptions in supply or increased conflict in the Middle East that drives up oil costs, there likely will be a number of states that average less than $3 a gallon by Christmas,” Green said.
...
Price declines may slow if crude futures don’t continue lower, Green said. West Texas Intermediate crude for November delivery dropped 54 cents to $102.33 a barrel today, and dropped 4.9 percent this month.

There’s a floor to how low gas prices can go given that crude prices are still above $100 a barrel,” Green said.

Time to break out Professor Farnsworth.