Gas prices fall before Memorial Day road trips

Stations charging less than $2 double since last week

The road to Memorial Day typically pumps up gasoline prices as motorists gear up for summer travel, but not this year.

Gas prices are suddenly falling as oil prices plummet.

When 2017 began, analysts said gasoline might approach $3 a gallon by Memorial Day, but that was off.

Instead, the number of gas stations in the USA selling fuel for less than $2 a gallon has nearly doubled since last week to 5,177, according to GasBuddy.

Gas is cheaper in 49 of 50 states than it was last week, according to GasBuddy. Prices averaged $2.37 as of Monday afternoon, down about 6 cents from April and up about 11 cents from a year earlier. Motorists save $1.50 per fill-up of a 15-gallon tank for every 10-cent drop.

“This is usually ripe territory for prices to be skyrocketing,” GasBuddy analyst Patrick DeHaan said, but “we may dip quite a bit in the next week or two. It’s a boon to motorists who are seeing a consistent decline for the last few weeks just ahead of Memorial Day weekend.”

As employment and the stock market hit records, expect motorists to go full throttle into the travel season.

“My hunch is it’s still going to be awfully congested in the summer. We’re still gonna use a lot of gas,” Oil Price Information Service analyst Tom Kloza said.

Oil prices have fallen more than 13% over the past month, dropping to below $46 per barrel in midday trading Monday and befuddling Wall Street analysts who projected sharp increases.

“There’s a part of me that says, ‘Geez, every investment bank can’t be wrong,’ ” Kloza said, but anyone projecting oil above $70 this year is “delusional.”

Behind the trend: U.S. shale oil producers have gotten more efficient and lowered the price at which they can turn a profit, Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Singer said in a research note.

Those oil companies increased production after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), led by its largest member, Saudi Arabia, reached a deal in November to lower its output.