Gas prices slide below $3 a gallon

Here’s a spring break we can all enjoy: lower gas prices.

At a time when gas prices traditionally rise, they continue to slide, even as the nation heads into peak summer driving season.

Nationally, prices now average $3.61 a gallon. That’s a12-cent drop from early March and 33 cents below $3.94 a year ago, when prices were close to a 2012 peak.

Consumers in some regions of the Rocky Mountains — close to relatively cheap North American crude oil near refiners — are filling up on sub-$3-a-gallon gas.

In Montana, which averages $3.37 a gallon, prices in some cities, such as Great Falls, are in the $2.90 range. Casper and Cheyenne, Wyo., had average prices below $3 for the entire quarter.

“We’ll probably see more markets with $3-a-gallon gas,” last week, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with the Oil Price Information Service and GasBuddy. Among the likely areas: South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.

GasBuddy analyst Patrick DeHaan estimates that each penny per gallon saved means savings of about $108 million a day over year-ago prices. The price-tracking Internet app tracks prices at more than 140,000 gas stations.

Still, prices at the pump could be prone to spikes — as they did last year when refinery disruptions caused supply issues in California and the Midwest. But DeHaan and Kloza expect continued price weakness for the next few weeks.

“The coast is not year clear for a 2013 top, but it was always nonsense to suggest that prices might vary from $4.25 to $5 a gallon,” Kloza said. “That won’t happen unless there is a disruption in the Mideast.”