Fredericksburg Leader

GasBuddy issued the following announcement on Nov. 29

For the third straight week, the nation’s average gas price has fallen, declining 3.4 cents from a week ago and stands at $3.379 per gallon today according to GasBuddy data compiled from more than 11 million individual price reports covering over 150,000 gas stations across the country. The national average is up 2.8 cents from a month ago and $1.30 per gallon higher than a year ago. The national average price of diesel has fallen 0.5 cents in the last week and stands at $3.625 per gallon.

“Gas price declines are slowly picking up momentum. With oil’s recent fall and the jury out on a new Covid variant, Omicron, we could be in store for lower prices based on many countries turning back to travel restrictions, limiting oil demand and potentially accelerating the drop in gas prices,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy. “There remains a very high level of uncertainty ahead of us as OPEC has also delayed its meetings to await more market movements and information on Omicron. But so far, Americans can expect the new variant to push gas prices even lower. Beyond the next few weeks, it remains nearly impossible to predict where oil and gas prices will head, though turbulence is guaranteed.”

OIL PRICES

Crude oil prices plummeted last Friday on word of a new Coronavirus variant, Omicron, which quickly led dozens of countries to institute travel restrictions and some implemented movement restrictions. WTI crude oil fell nearly 13% last Friday while Brent shed 11%. However, with some reports of cases of the new variant being mild, Monday morning saw a strong rally in crude futures, with WTI up $4.61 per barrel to $72.76 per barrel, still down from last week’s $75.43 level, while Brent crude was up $4.12 per barrel to $76.84, also still lower from last week’s $78.34 level. In response to oil’s selloff, OPEC delayed meetings scheduled for this week by two days to further monitor the market’s reaction as OPEC mulls over whether to increase oil production in December, or to delay for a month in light of the new Covid variant. Turbulence in oil prices is expected in coming weeks ahead of news of vaccination effectiveness against Micron.

According to Baker Hughes, last week’s U.S. rig count rose by 6 to 569, and was 249 rigs higher than a year ago. The Canadian rig count rose by 4 to 171, or 69 more than a year ago.

OIL AND REFINED PRODUCT INVENTORIES

According to data from the Energy Information Administration last week, crude oil inventories posted a mild 1 million barrel rise but still stand 7% below the average for this time of year, while US oil production rose 100,000 barrels back to 11.5 million barrels per day. Gasoline inventories fell by 600,000 barrels and stand 6% below the five year average for this time of year. Distillate inventories fell by 2 million barrels and stand about 8% below the five year average for this time of year. Refinery utilization saw a rise of 0.7 percentage points from last week to 88.6% of capacity. Implied gasoline demand, a proxy for retail gasoline demand, rose to 9.33 million barrels per day.

FUEL DEMAND

According to GasBuddy demand data driven by its Pay with GasBuddy card, U.S. retail gasoline demand fell last week as motorists parked at their Thanksgiving destinations after a surge in demand early in the week. Nationally, weekly gasoline demand was down 2.8% from the prior week, while demand fell 2.9% in PADD 1, fell 2.0% in PADD 2, fell 5.1% in PADD 3, rose 2.1% in PADD 4 and fell 4.8% in PADD 5.

GAS PRICE TRENDS

The most common U.S. gas price encountered by motorists stood at $3.19 per gallon, unchanged from last week, followed by $3.29, $3.09, $2.99 and $3.39 rounding out the five most common prices.

The average cost at the priciest 10% of stations stands at $4.40 per gallon, down 1 cent from a week ago, while the lowest 10% average $2.85 per gallon, down 3 cents from a week ago.

The median U.S. price is $3.28 per gallon, a decline of 1 cent from last week and about 9 cents lower than the national average.

The states with the lowest average prices: Oklahoma ($2.90), Texas ($2.94) and Arkansas ($3.00).

The states with the highest priced states: California ($4.69), Hawaii ($4.32) and Nevada ($3.94).

Original source can be found here.