A handful of gas stations in Springfield have lowered their prices to $2.99 for a gallon of regular-grade gasoline. That’s according to the price-tracking website GasBuddy.com. And GasBuddy analyst Patrick DeHaan expects more downstate Illinois gas stations to follow their lead in the coming weeks and months.
“By November and early December, we could see over half the stations outside of Chicago in the state dropping under that price,” says DeHaan, “We could see Illinois’ average price even get close to three dollars a gallon, which would represent maybe even a third of the state’s stations outside Chicago dropping under three dollars a gallon.”
Illinois’s average price for a gallon of Regular is currently $3.44, according to GasBuddy.com. But DeHaan predicts those prices to gently drop over the next few weeks, to reach their lowest level in three years.
DeHaan credits the low gasoline prices to a seasonal drop in demand for gasoline, falling crude oil prices, and lack of disruptions in global oil production, despite concerns about Russia and the Mideast. He says prices could stay low until December, when production of winter blends of gasoline could start to push them back up.