As the busy holiday travel season begins, gas prices are now 11 cents lower than a year ago, and they could sink below $3 per gallon by Christmas.
Prices in Florida have dropped for 31 straight days, for a total of 41 cents. The average price in Jacksonville was $3.13 on Monday — 13 cents lower than last week and far below the record $4.89 in June.
The AAA auto club says the price of crude oil has fallen 29% in the last month in response to worldwide economic concerns. Eleven percent of the drop came last week. That means more reductions at the pump in the weeks ahead, AAA said.
"Unless fundamentals change, the state average could easily sink below $3 a gallon before Christmas Day,"
Mark Jenkins, public relations manager for AAA, said Monday in a news release.
Patrick De Hann, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said 15 states already have average gas prices below $3. The national average should fall below $3 by Christmas, he wrote on the GasBuddy blog.
Diesel prices are set to fall between 50 cents and $1 per gallon over the next six weeks or so. De Hann said.
AAA estimates that 6.3 million Floridians — a record number — will travel 50 miles or more over the holidays. About 5.8 million of them will travel by car, AAA says.
The most congested days on the road are forecast to be the Friday before Christmas, Dec. 27 and 28, and Monday, Jan. 2, according to INRIX, a provider of transportation analytics and insights.
