Gas Prices Will Begin To Drop in September

Prices in the area this weekend were 80.9 cents per gallon lower than a year ago, and were down 17.3 cents over the past month. The Pilot station at 2112 Rees St. and Interstate 10 and Murphy USA, 505 Latiolais Road – both in Breaux Bridge – were selling regular gas at $1.99 a gallon Monday morning.

“When you have a huge spike like that, prices don’t fall as fast as they spiked up”, said Will Speer, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com, a website that tracks real-time local gas prices.

Filling up a passenger vehicle in the United States is the cheapest it has been in more than a decade, yet its remains too expensive.

He says prices could ultimate slip lower than earlier projections of under $2 per gallon, just as long as the refineries don’t go down again. Oil is down 34 percent from its high of $61.43 this year, and 62 percent from its high of $107.26 last year.

While gas prices have fallen 14 cents per gallon in Orange County in the past week, that’s slower than in many parts of the country. Illinois is now the only state in the Midwest with an average price still above $3 a gallon. Problems at the BP refinery in Whiting, Ind., caused a price spike in much of the Great Lakes region in recent weeks.

AAA estimates gasoline prices could also continue to fall, going below $2 a gallon by Christmas – or even by Thanksgiving. On the flip side, motorists in the Northeast should now be on alert after a major fire struck a PBF refinery in Delaware City on Friday. Dropping oil prices and reduced constraint leads experts to believe that many areas will see gas drop below $2 a gallon on average by the time Christmas rolls around.

Meanwhile, a low pressure system in the mid Atlantic was showing signs of organization Monday, the National Hurricane Center said.