U.S. gas prices decline for 28th straight day
Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferre compares the decline in gas prices by state as crude oil prices continue to slide downward for the fourth consecutive week.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: All right, well, while inflation might affect some Prime Day spending, Americans are finally seeing some relief at the pump. Gas prices declining for 28 days in a row, bringing the national average to 4.66 a gallon. Ines Ferre is following the moves for us. And Ines, we were waiting for a significant drop. The pattern here, 28 days in a row that we've seen declines, certainly good news for millions of Americans.
INES FERRE: Oh, yeah, that's right, and especially if you live in the Southeast, because the southeastern states have seen more declines compared to the Western states. I'll get to that in just a second. But definitely over the last month, we have seen these prices declining by about $0.35. You mentioned it, Seana, $4.66 a gallon. Remember when we were paying more than $5 per gallon? That's regular gasoline. It wasn't that long ago.
So GasBuddy has the states that have seen the most declines, and you're looking at Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, Texas. Those states have seen declines by about $0.50. Now you're still, though, paying about $1.50 more per gallon compared to last year. Again, the Western states are the ones that still have high gas prices. So you're looking at California, the average, the state average there is still above $6 a gallon. You're also looking at states like Oregon, Nevada, those are seeing gasoline prices of about $5 or more per gallon.
But one analyst, Sandy Lipow, says that you can expect to see gas prices to continue to decline. He's thinking that they could decline down to $4.40 per gallon if we go off with the next six weeks without any major hurricane. If there is a hurricane, then refineries could be shut down. You have some interruptions there. So all bets are off if there is one.
RACHELLE AKUFFO: And Ines, I want to ask you about oil prices. We did see, obviously, they're down below $100 a barrel today. But a lot of people are wondering, when is the other shoe going to drop? What are you watching with oil prices?
INES FERRE: Yeah, that's right. I want to pull up the YFi Interactive board so you can see what happened today with WTI, just absolutely tumbling down 8%. Brent crude down 7 and 1/2%. These oil prices are at three-month lows. So you've got the US dollar at the 20-year highs. So that causes pressure on oil prices because it makes oil prices for international buyers more expensive. But a lot of this is because of the China new lockdown concerns, resurgence of cases there.
And also, I should note that some commentary from analysts is that Russian oil, while Western nations have had this de facto ban on Russian oil, it still has made its way to China, to India, to South America. A lot of these price declines, though, these could be temporary. You've got OPEC that came out with a bullish outlook for 2023. It sees demand going higher next year. It sees the global economy growing by more than 3%.
And also, some analysts that are calling for forecasts of WTI well above $100 a barrel this year. Remember that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve release, that release is expected to end by around mid-November. So you've got that to contend with there. And so while we may see these oil prices normalize for a while the consensus among a lot of analysts is that they are still going to be at elevated levels.
