Gas Prices Fall Another Nickel A Gallon This Week

Slowly but surely, gasoline prices continue to fall, and are now more than 30 cents below their peak on May 5.

The national average price of self-serve regular today is $3.675 a gallon, down from $3.723 last Friday, according to AAA's Fuel Gauge Survey. The price of diesel fuel is $3.982, barely budging from $3.986 a gallon last week.

While gasoline prices have continued their slow descent, oil prices have remained somewhat volatile, but have traded around $100 a barrel. In its weekly report on Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported U.S. crude oil supplies fell by 3.4 million barrels, but gasoline stockpiles increased.

Today, only two states, Alaska and Hawaii, report average gasoline prices above $4 a gallon. For consumers, that's a big improvement from six weeks ago.

“For comparison, on May 5 of this year, when the national average price per gallon reached its spring peak of $3.98, nearly half of U.S. states reported prices of more than $4 per gallon,” said Avery Ash, AAA's manager of federal relations. “At that time 35 percent of retail stations had a pump price above $4 per gallon. As of today, this count has dropped to less than five percent.”

The states with the most expensive gasoline today are:

• Alaska ($4.231)
• Hawaii ($4.062)
• Connecticut ($3.998)
• Washington, DC ($3.965)
• Illinois ($3.950)
• New York ($3.937)
• California ($3.917)
• Washington ($3.880)
• Oregon ($3.838)
• Vermont ($3.816)

 The states with the least expensive gasoline today are:

• South Carolina ($3.412)
• Mississippi ($3.479)
• Tennessee ($3.485)
• Alabama ($3.492)
• Arkansas ($3.508)
• Missouri ($3.531)
• Oklahoma ($3.551)
• Louisiana ($3.555)
• Virginia ($3.557)
• Texas ($3.563)