The average cost of regular gasoline in the United States tumbled to its lowest level in almost four years.
Regular gasoline slid 18.2 cents in the past two weeks to $3.08 gallon, while gasoline prices today are 28.69 cents cheaper compared to last year, a Lundberg Survey Inc. revealed based on data collected from 2,500 filling stations across the country by the Camarillo company.
This is the biggest drop in gasoline prices since Dec. 17, 2010, and will continue to drop because the price of oil, which contributes 64 percent to the price of gasoline, also went down 24 percent from its highest level in June.
"The crude oil price crash has been passed through by refiners," said Trilby Lundberg, president of Lundberg Survey.
"Retailers will probably be pressed to pass through at the pump a few more pennies of price-cutting sometime soon," Lundberg added.
The highest price for gasoline in was in San Francisco, at $3.45 a gallon, Lundberg said, while the lowest price was in Memphis, Tenn., where customers paid an average $2.73 a gallon.
Regular gasoline cost an average of $3.33 per gallon on Long Island in New York, and $3.39 in Los Angeles.
On a side note, West Texas Intermediate crude, the benchmark used in the United States for gas prices went down $4.81 (5.6 percent) to $81.01 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange in the past two weeks that ended Friday. It again dropped below $80 on Oct. 16, the first time it dropped below that level since June 2012.
As gasoline prices reached its floor price, West Texas Intermediate crude awent down again after stockpiles rose across the country. It fell to $80.52 on Wednesday. Analysts predicted that the price of gasoline will continue to drop to $75 before the year ends.
While gasoline price go down, U.S. oil output was 8.95 million barrels a day the week of Oct. 10, the most since 1985. U.S. production has increased about 66 percent in the last five years as companies operated hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to tap into hydrocarbon-rich layers of underground shale rock.
