The price of a gallon of Regular-grade gasoline is now below the $2 mark at many gas stations in downstate Illinois.
Analyst Patrick DeHaan, with GasBuddy.com, thinks those prices may be within five or ten cents of bottoming out. He says prices should start rising in January or February, when oil refineries cut back production for seasonal maintenance and retooling.
But DeHaan predicts gas prices in 2015 will stay lower overall than the year before.
“Gasoline prices may struggle to reach three dollars a gallon. And we could be talking about an average price during the 2015 year of somewhere between the mid to upper two-dollar gallon area.”
DeHaan credits the overall drop to increased U.S. oil production and the decision by Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations to lower their oil prices as well.