Record lows not seen since 2021?

In today’s troubled world, we’re all looking for some good news.

Came across this headline last week published by NPR:

“Gas prices down. We could be headed for lows not seen since 2021.”

Beats a story this newspaper published in February 2023 that had one news outlet quoting someone saying that gas could hit the $4/gallon mark again.

According to the NPR story, the national average for a gallon of regular has fallen more than 20 cents since May.

To show blessed we are in Texas compared to, say, California, according to AAA, the average price per gallon last week in the Golden State (a misnomer) was $4.59, thanks in large part to the exorbitant taxes.

Here, in the Lone Star State, the average price per gallon was about $2.64 as of last Friday, Aug. 30.

As the NPR story mentions, however, the wild card with regard to gas prices is the chance of a hurricane popping up, shutting down oil production in the Gulf, along with excessive heat.

Last summer, for example, with its record heat, Texas refineries had to curtail operations, while Hurricane Idalia temporarily shut down oil production in the Gulf.

So, we can hope for a lot of rain in the RGV, northern Mexico, to refill the water reservoirs without the damage a hurricane will bring.

Gas: .32 a Gallon?

For those of us old enough to remember the days of .32/ gallon gas, with attendants at full-service stations who still pumped the gas for us while checking the oil, the tire pressure, and cleaning the windshield, things started to turn sour in the latter half of the 1970s when gas first hit $1 a gallon.

The average price of gasoline spiked, or so we thought back then, in 1981 when it hit $1.35 per gallon on average across the U.S. That was double the prices drivers were paying just three years prior in 1978, which was five years after President Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon signed a law changing the national maximum speed limit law to 55.

Today, of course, the speed limits are back where they should be — 75 mph in the slow lane — while gas is south of the $3 mark. At least in Texas.

Two years ago, March 2022, thanks in large part to Putin’s mad dash into Ukraine, gas at the pumps hit an all-time record: $4.17 per gallon. (Source: AAA.) The cost for diesel, with its added taxes, was even worse: $4.84 per gallon, which broke the 2008 record.

Part of the problem two years ago, segueing into today, was the fact that Russia was the second-largest oil producer in the world; but now the U.S. is number one, depending on which source you access.

Still, the good news is, it looks as if the price of a gallon of gas will continue to decline, unless I just jinxed it by writing about it.

Call me a superstitious sort.