Analyst: Gas Prices Continuing Downward Slide

GasBuddy.com reports a handful of Springfield gas stations have lowered their prices to $2.99 a gallon for Regular --- with the potential for more stations following their lead.

GasBuddy analyst Patrick DeHaan says he expects more downstate Illinois gas stations to lower their prices below $3 a gallon in the next few weeks and months --- as part of declining prices throughout the Great Lakes states..

"By November and early December, we could see over half the stations outside of Chicago in the state dropping under that price", said 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 since 2011 --- surpassing late 2013, when a small number of gas stations dropped prices below $3.

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.