Local gas prices drop another 6.5 cents per gallon last week
For the cheapest gas in Tennessee or Georgia, you might want to head to South Pittsburg, Tenn.
Two Cedar Avenue stations near Interstate 24 in South Pittsburg were selling regular fuel on Monday at $2.11 per gallon — the lowest of any gas station in Tennessee or Georgia, according to GasBuddy.com.
“The prices we pay for fuel supplies are coming down so we’ve been able to cut our prices for motorists,” said Jay Patel, the wife of store owner Andy Patel at Rudder’s Market.
Nearby, the Lottery Food Mart also was selling regular gas at $2.11 per gallon, the lowest price there in more than a month.
Gas prices fell last week across the Chattanooga region for the third consecutive week after oil refineries and pipelines recovered from Hurricane Harvey, which hit the Gulf coast in late August.
The average retail gasoline price in Chattanooga fell another 6.5 cents per gallon in the past week to $2.44 a gallon Sunday, according to GasBuddy’s daily survey of 170 gas outlets in Chattanooga. Chattanooga gas prices, on average, were 9 cents a gallon below the U.S. average of $2.53 per gallon.
Gas prices are falling in spite of an increase in oil prices on the global market, which fell Monday to the lowest settlement in more than a week. Oil prices were pressured by a stronger dollar and a weekly rise in the number of active U.S. oil rigs for the first time in a month.
November West Texas Intermediate crude dropped $1.09 per barrel, or 2.1 percent, to settle at $50.58 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Monday. That was the lowest closing price since Sept. 21, according to FactSet data.
“For a third straight week, the majority of states saw average pump prices for gasoline fall as refineries affected by Hurricane Harvey in late August continued to show signs of being on the mend,” Dan McTeague, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy, said in a report released Monday. “All the more remarkable when you consider that oil prices, which rose over $5 a barrel in September, did not prevent gasoline prices from declining and that momentum is likely to continue with another decrease for the week
ahead. … It will take weeks or months to see gasoline inventories recover fully, but prices will continue to slowly drift lower as inventories improve.”
Local prices at the pump are still 32.6 cents per gallon higher than a year ago, in part, because prices were pushed up by the biggest amount in six years after Hurricane Harvey idled more than a dozen refineries and briefly shut down shipments along the Colonial gas pipeline.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340.