Gas prices didn’t move last week

First published Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 in the Dundalk Eagle.

In the Baltimore area, gallon of gas costed $3.01 per gallon on Monday, according to a Gasbuddy analysis. That’s a bit less than a cent cheaper compared to last week.

Across the country, gas prices rose by about a cent, according to Gasbuddy, averaging $3.16 per gallon. It increased significantly in New York, the company said, increasing about eight cents per gallon.

”With oil prices jumping after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a larger-than-expected half percent, we’ve seen some states where gas prices have inched back up, while others have continued to decline,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said in a press release.

Gas prices are a bit cheaper this week than they were in 2021 — but far more expensive than during 2020, when gas averaged only $2.20 per gallon. That was a five-year low.

Even so, pre-pandemic gas prices were much lower than they are now.

Whether the prices will continue to decrease in the months ahead is a different question. The Energy Information Administration predicted last week that gas prices would start to rise across the East Coast starting in March 2025.

”We still expect oil prices will rise in the coming months, driven by ongoing withdrawals from global oil inventories as a result of OPEC+ production cuts,” it wrote in a report.

OPEC, which stands for Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, is a consortium of 12 countries that produce oil and includes many Middle Eastern countries, several African countries, and one member from South America, Venezuela. OPEC+ countries aren’t part of OPEC but agreed to reduce oil production in the past.