Gas hits lowest November price since recession

As we prepare to motor into the holiday season, Wichitans have something to celebrate – the lowest November gasoline prices since the 2007-09 recession.

Gas prices for this time of year are the lowest they’ve been in the past eight years, and at some Wichita stations, they have dipped below the average price going all the way back to 2005.

At the Phillips 66 station in downtown Wichita on Monday, where gas was $1.89 a gallon, Kameron Sanchez said it’s like an early present.

“I may not remember when it was low, but I remember when it was $4 a gallon,” said Sanchez, who is 23 and works at Subway. “It’s been to the point where I had to call in to work because I couldn’t afford gas.”

Now, she said, “I might actually be able to go someplace out of town.”

The average cost of a gallon of regular gas in Wichita was $1.92 in an AAA Auto Club survey released Monday. That was 2 cents below the Kansas state average of $1.94.

That’s 6 cents a gallon lower than last year and 17 cents lower than just last month, the survey showed.

The last time gas prices were this low at this point of the year was in 2008, when the budding recession sent prices tumbling. Now, the overall economy is more stable, but a glut of crude oil is pushing prices down.

Jennifer Haugh of AAA said low prices will continue into the near future as Middle East countries continue to let the taps run as fast they can, expecting they’ll see production limits next year from the OPEC cartel. Next year, OPEC is expected to try to get its member states to reduce production in an effort to raise oil prices, she said.

She said gas prices will probably go up slightly in the run-up to Christmas because of the increased demands of holiday travel, but the price usually bottoms out for the year just after the holiday.

The lowest price of the past 10 years was $1.43 per gallon on Dec. 31, 2008. The November price that year had been $1.89, a nickel below the current price.

Back at the 66 station, Greg Regier said he’d noticed the recent price drop. He travels back and forth to Oklahoma regularly for work and noted that gas is even cheaper there, $1.87 in the AAA survey.

And even that seems high to him.

“It was under a buck when I was 16, so if it’s not under a buck, it doesn’t seem cheap to me,” he said.

This story was originally published November 14, 2016 at 6:58 PM with the headline "Gas hits lowest November price since recession."