Gas prices are dropping just in time for Thanksgiving
Trevor Peak was fueling a box truck at a Bradenton Wawa on Thursday, where regular unleaded gasoline was selling for $2.32 a gallon.
“It’s excellent. It’s saving me a lot of money,” Peak said.
The downward momentum of fuel prices, what a GasBuddy analyst called “astounding” and “a dramatic turnaround in market psyche in the last month,” comes as a gift to drivers who will be hitting the road for the Thanksgiving holiday.
AAA projects 54.3 million Americans will journey 50 miles or more away from home this Thanksgiving, 4.8 percent more than last year.
The 2018 holiday weekend will see the highest Thanksgiving travel volume since 2005, with 2.5 million more people taking to the nation’s roads, skies, rails and waterways compared with last year, according to AAA.
GasBuddy is recommending that motorists hold off on filling their tanks for now because prices could drop even lower, thanks to the recent 7 percent single-day drop in the price of crude oil, which extended the record streak of 12 days that oil has moved lower.
“A 26 percent drop in the price of oil is absolutely shocking given the environment and concern ahead of the Iran sanctions that the oil market was not supplied with enough oil,” said Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.
The national average has shed 24 cents per gallon in the last month, with some states seeing even bigger monthly declines, GasBuddy reported.
“The inventory of oil is up again, and the petroleum companies don’t want to hold onto it. They need to move it,” said James Curran, dean of the College of Business, USF Sarasota-Manatee.
On Thursday, the average price of regular gas in Manatee County was $2.41 a gallon, compared to $2.53 in Sarasota County, $2.54 statewide and $2.67 nationally.
The drop in oil prices will extend the decline in gas prices for perhaps several more weeks in nearly all states, at a time of year millions of Americans are preparing to hit the road.
Most states could see a decline of 5-15 cents per gallon ahead of Thanksgiving, with more to come, GasBuddy reported.
“Motorists need not be in a hurry to fill their tanks,” GasBuddy said of the recent sell-off, which is expected to extend and accelerate the declines seen at the pump.
A year ago, regular gasoline in the Bradenton area was selling for $2.51 a gallon.
The highest recorded average price for a gallon of regular in the Bradenton area, $4.06, was set July 17, 2008, according to AAA.
This story was originally published November 15, 2018 at 3:47 PM.