The Thornton’s in Springboro was selling gas for $1.93 a gallon Monday morning.
The average price for gas in the Dayton area is $2.18, down from $2.38 one week ago, according to the GasBuddy.com site.
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Prices are down 20 cents from the average this time last year.
According to GasBuddy, the lowest price for gas in the area is at Murphy USA in Franklin, where the price for unleaded gas is $1.92 a gallon.
The trend is more than local. Falling gas prices have been reported in Fresno, Calif., Detroit, and central Illinois.
Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis for the web site GasBuddy, is pointing to the coronavirus, which has markedly depressed oil prices.
Last week saw a big selloff on major stock markets, and oil prices followed along, DeHaan said Monday.
“If this does spread, if this does really hit the U.S., it’s going to mean demand destruction,” he said in a phone interview with the Dayton Daily News. “People will be staying home from work, school, they won’t be traveling. The trickle down would be that it would reduce oil demand noticeably in the world’s largest oil consumer.”
“And for that reason, you’re seeing prices drop below $2 a gallon,” he
added.
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Twenty-six states on Monday morning have at least one gas station selling prices below $2 a gallon, he noted.
Demand for fuel has fallen some 20 percent in China, as flights have been cancelled, factories have been closed and people are staying home in
quarantined communities.
Oil prices fell below $50 a barrel recently, while CNN reported that in the U.S. oil was trading at $44.76, a 16.2 percent decline compared to the week before. Even natural gas prices are affected.
So what’s ahead? No one has a crystal ball, but DeHaan expects oil prices generally to follow stock prices. As stocks rise, so should oil prices.
“I would expect oil prices to track very much with the Dow (Jones Industrial Average),” he said. “Their fate is tied together with the coronavirus. If you see the Dow shoot up, oil prices are going along with it.”
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