Wednesday, May 24, 2017

A Slow Summer Gas Season

If you’re planning to kick off your summer with a Memorial Day road trip, you couldn’t have picked a better year to do so. Gas prices going into the holiday, considered the unofficial start to the summer driving season, are well below where they typically are at this time of year, according to data firm Bespoke Investment Group.

A gallon of gas costs an average of $2.36 per gallon in the U.S. right now, 22 percent below the $3.04 average going back to 2005. It has only been cheaper to fill the tank in two other years since then: 2016, when prices were at $2.29 a gallon, and 2005, when they were at $2.12.

And this is the time of year, as we enter the summer, when prices are normally the strongest. On average, prices are up 22 percent between the start of the year and May 23, but thus far in 2017, prices are up a mere 1.1 percent, the lowest year-to-date increase in Bespoke’s data set by far.

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