HOUSTON: US drivers paid an average of $2.2021 a gallon for regular petrol at US pumps last week, the lowest level for this time of year since 2009, according to Lundberg Survey Inc.
Prices dropped 26.92 cents in the three-week period to January 9 and are $1.14 a gallon below year-ago levels, according to the survey, which is based on information obtained at about 2,500 filling stations by the Camarillo, California-based company.
Retail petrol fell after crude oil prices dropped below $50 for the first time since 2009 as Opec members said they wouldn’t reduce output to bolster prices that have dropped by more than half since June. US stockpiles of petrol at 237 million barrels were the highest since 2011 in the week ended January 2, according to government data. Refineries across the nation ran at nearly 94 percent of operable capacity.
“The prime mover for gasoline prices was lower crude oil,” Trilby Lundberg, the president of Lundberg Survey, said. Petrol at the pump is at the lowest since April 2009, when prices were $2.0549 a gallon, Lundberg said. Over the last five years, prices averaged $3.17 a gallon in early January. The highest price for petrol in the lower 48 states among the markets surveyed was in San Francisco at $2.66 a gallon, Lundberg said.
The lowest price was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where customers paid an average $1.76 a gallon. Regular petrol averaged $2.54 a gallon on Long Island, New York, and $2.59 in Los Angeles.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the US benchmark priced in Cushing, Oklahoma, declined $8.16, or 14 percent, to $48.36 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange in the three weeks to January 9.
WP-Bloomberg
