Gas prices drop just in time for summer travel
Memorial Day prices are among the lowest of the last 10 years
Motorists are getting a break at the pump as they head into the Memorial Day weekend as gasoline prices continue to tumble, enticing drivers to take to the road.
Motorists are getting a break at the pump as they head into the Memorial Day weekend as gasoline prices continue to tumble, enticing drivers to take to the road.
Gasoline prices typically rise as the U.S. heads into the summer driving season, but they’ve instead fallen by about 10 cents in the Houston area over the past month and look to hang at about $2.19 per gallon as the long weekend opens, according to GasBuddy.com, a website that tracks gasoline prices and refining activity.
U.S. prices have declined 5 cents per gallon from their April peak to about $2.38 this week.
And those low prices are sending drivers onto the nation’s highways.
“It’s great for summer coming on,” said Chuck Hendrix, 64, from Missouri City, planning a 10-day summer trip in his “gas-guzzling” GMC Denali. “We’ll do something in August. My kids have never seen the Grand Canyon.”
About 3.2 million Texans will travel 50 miles or more away from home over the long weekend, the Texas branch of the motor club AAA said, almost 3 percent higher than last year and the highest Memorial Day travel volume in more than a decade.
And those low prices, plus a strong U.S. economy, portend well for summer travel, too, analysts say. More Americans are planning to hit the
road this summer compared with 2016, according to the annual summer travel study conducted by GasBuddy.
More than 82 percent of those surveyed said they will take a road trip over the hot months, a 7 percent increase from last year and a 9 percent increase compared with 2015. More than two-thirds planned to take at least two trips.
Gasoline prices typically rise in May as drivers prepare for summer vacations, and the increased demand pushes oil and gasoline prices higher.
But this year, oil prices, after rebounding from their 2016 bottom, have sputtered as global crude supplies remain stubbornly high, despite OPEC’s efforts cut production. Gasoline supplies are also flush, further lowering prices.
After a steady rise from a low of $26 a barrel, crude prices have remained stuck at about $50 a barrel, less than half the price of their 2014 peak. Oil prices fell $2.46, or nearly 5 percent, on Thursday to $48.90, after OPEC announced it would maintain production cuts but not deepen them.
All of that leaves the average U.S. gasoline price nearly the same now as it was in January, GasBuddy said. Typically, gasoline prices rise almost 50 cents over the first six months of the year.
“It has been a remarkably quiet spring at the pump,” said Patrick DeHaan, a GasBuddy analyst.
U.S. gasoline prices this Memorial Day will be the second cheapest in the last decade at about $2.39 per gallon, 76 cents lower than the 10-year average of $3.15 per gallon.
U.S. drivers should spend $2.2 billion less over the long weekend than they did at the highest-priced recent Memorial Day weekend, in 2011, when gas cost $3.78 on average per gallon, according to GasBuddy.
Quinn Hebert is taking advantage of it, loading his three boys into his Chevrolet Tahoe this weekend for a four-hour trip to Louisiana to visit family.
Hebert, 53, an oil services worker from the West University neighborhood in Houston, has no problem spending money on gasoline.
“I’m in the oil and gas business,” he said. “I want prices to go up. I want people to drive by car, take long motor vacations. I’m doing my part to increase demand.”
“I’m in the oil and gas business. I want prices to go up. I want people to drive by car, take long motor vacations. I’m doing my part to increase demand.” Quinn Hebert, oil services worker