March 28, 2024

AAA: ‘Lowest gas prices since 2005’ during holiday weekend

Iowa sees $2.14 per gallon average

At the Love’s truck stop Friday off Iowa Speedway Drive, Mike Renzaglia and his partner stopped to fuel up en route to their home in Wisconsin.

They had spent several days in Colorado’s Estes Park in the Rocky Mountains, and took a detour to celebrate with Renzaglia’s oldest son who was just accepted to graduate school at The University of Kansas in Lawrence.

Renzaglia found a nice bonus at the central Iowa fuel pump, a regular unleaded price sitting at $2.08 per gallon.

“Colorado was more expensive,” he said. “I don’t know if it was due to a gas tax or because it was a tourist area, but we paid 40 cents more per gallon there.”

As Iowa travelers began to hit the road Friday, motorists were seeing a statewide average of $2.14 per gallon of regular unleaded gasoline, according to the nonprofit motor club AAA. In Newton, most fuel stations were selling a gallon of regular at approximately the $2.08 per gallon price point Renzaglia found.

Gail Weinholzer, director of public affairs for AAA’s Iowa/Minnesota region Auto Club Group, said Iowan’s are seeing their lowest Fourth of July gas prices since 2005.

“We’ve been seeing prices decline since Memorial Day. That does not typically happen,” she said. “It usually starts to peak out after the Fourth (of July) and hit a low in September. We’re seeing the opposite of that right now.”

Compared to Friday’s $2.23 per gallon national average, Iowans are paying noticeably less then two-thirds of U.S. states this holiday weekend. Some southern states, such as South Carolina, were seeing prices as low as $1.90 per gallon as of Friday. California was seeing the highest average price in the continental U.S. at approximately $2.94 per gallon.

Weinholzer said the cause of the unusual summer decline is an increase in oil supply largely coming from ramped up American oil rigs and fracking fields.

The lowering gas prices, she said, are coming at a time when even the 14-member OPEC nations have decreased supply in order to raise worldwide oil prices.

Contact Mike Mendenhall at mmendenhall@newtondailynews.com