As millions of people get ready to drive over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, gas prices are getting close to their lowest level this summer in four years.
A gallon of gas across the country cost $3.16 on Thursday, which is almost 10% less than it was a year ago, according to AAA figures. In the past few weeks, gas costs have gone down because the rise in crude oil prices caused by the Middle East war has been wiped out.
From New Mexico to South Carolina, twenty states have average gas prices that are less than $3. A gallon of gas costs $2.71 in Mississippi, which has the lowest gas prices in the country.
AAA said that over 61 million people would be traveling by car over the July 4 holiday.
Timothy Fitzgerald, a professor of business economics at the University of Tennessee who studies the oil industry, said, “The lower gas prices are good news for travelers.”
A lot of people say that low gas prices are caused by cheap crude oil.
The price of U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures, which is a key indicator of U.S. oil prices, has dropped more than 17% since January, when it hit a high point.
Oil prices have gone down because economists think that the world economy will grow less quickly, which will lower demand for oil.
OPEC+, an alliance of oil-producing countries, has been increasing production over the past few months, which has boosted supply. Someone from AAA, Aixa Diaz, said that the extra oil on the market has helped meet the yearly rise in demand that happens during the summer travel season.
“The price of crude oil has a lot to do with how much we pay at the pump,” Diaz said.
When war broke out in the Middle East last month, the price of crude oil went through the roof. But now prices are back to where they were before the recent conflict between Israel and Iran.
“It does help that things are getting better in the Middle East,” said Patrick de Haan, head of petroleum research at GasBuddy.
Since he became president, President Donald Trump has talked a lot about how cheap gas is.
In April, Trump wrote on social media, “We have everything down at levels that nobody ever thought possible.”
Monday at an event in Ochopee, Florida, Trump said that in five states, gas costs had dropped below $2 per gallon.
De Haan wrote on X Monday that GasBuddy, a website that tracks prices at thousands of gas stops across the country, found no places selling gas for less than $2 per gallon. That was still true as of Thursday, de Haan said.
Trump might be talking about gas prices at the wholesale level, but de Haan said that those prices don’t really matter because customers don’t pay them.
“This smells bad,” de Haan said.
Prices for gas are likely to stay the same or even go down for the rest of the summer, according to some experts. They also said that the summer is usually when the gas availability rises, which lowers prices.
Still, de Haan said prices could go up if there was a geopolitical conflict, a bad hurricane season, or big oil refinery outages. He also said that by September, the national average price for a gallon of gas could drop below $3.
De Haan said, “It could happen if we don’t see any of those caveats.” “If the year goes as planned.”
