Alabamians are experiencing relief from high gas prices. GasBuddy, a company that does fuel price tracking to help Americans save on gas prices reported on Aug. 19 that national average gas prices have dipped for a third consecutive week.
AAA echoed this sentiment in their own report on Aug. 22. AAA noted that while gas prices have decreased, prices for plug in electrical vehicles have remained steady.
“We’ve seen them drop 12 cents a gallon in the past month, and about seven cents a gallon just in the past week, and we're very close to that $3 per gallon mark here in Alabama. And I think we're going to continue to see prices kind of slipping downward, you know, throughout the fall and typically around the end of the year,” said Clay Ingram, a public relations representative for AAA.
Ingram also said the decrease in fuel prices could be attributed to summer vacation ending.
“School has started back for most people, and when that happens, every year we see a decrease in demand for our gasoline because schools started back and vacations are kind of over for most people. And anytime, almost anytime, you see a drop in demand, you're going to see a drop in price as well, because that's what gas prices are all about,” Ingram said.
Hurricane season, which began June 1 and will conclude Nov. 30, also has an effect on fuel prices.
“We’re currently in hurricane season right now and with anticipation of a very busy hurricane season that's caused some anxiety in the in the oil market, and it's caused prices to bump up a little bit,” Ingram explained. “And we've already had two major hurricanes already, and those have caused prices to bump up a little bit over the previous six weeks or so, but now we're seeing those prices kind of come back down to earth a little bit, and very soon, we'll have our state average below $3 a gallon.”
Ingram said that motorists across America, including in Alabama, have more power than they might expect over oil companies.
“Motorists have two very powerful tools to put downward pressure on gas prices. One of those is fuel conservation, and what I mean by that is just not using any more fuel than you need to use, and we're doing a pretty good job with that. We don't have a lot of people out wasting gas these days, so that's a good thing, and that helps,” he said. “The second thing is shopping. And what I mean by that is just making a concerted effort to buy the cheapest price gas in your normal travel area, you know, from day to day, week to week, month to month. And what that does is it creates competition in the marketplace and puts downward pressure on our prices, because the higher price gas stations, if they're not selling much gas, they have to decide whether they want to live with that or mark their prices down to sell more gas.”
To learn more about fuel price changes, visit GasBuddy and AAA.