Gas prices are five cents lower in Western Pennsylvania this week at $3.379 per gallon, according to AAA East Central’s Gas Price Report.
This week’s average prices: Western Pennsylvania Average $3.379
Average price during the week of Dec. 16, 2024 $3.423
Average price during the week of Dec. 26, 2023 $3.435
The average price of unleaded self-serve gasoline in various areas:
$3.319 Altoona
$3.435 Beaver
$3.537 Bradford
$3.280 Brookville
$3.454 Butler
$3.357 Clarion
$3.385 DuBois
$3.369 Erie
$3.379 Greensburg
$3.405 Indiana
$3.416 Jeannette
$3.468 Kittanning
$3.406 Latrobe
$3.345 Meadville
$3.484 Mercer
$3.184 New Castle
$3.370 New Kensington
$3.434 Oil City
$3.351 Pittsburgh
$3.172 Sharon
$3.359 Uniontown
$3.501 Warren
$3.298 Washington
Trend Analysis:
After weeks of slightly lower prices, the national average for a gallon of gas reversed course, rising two cents to $3.04 over the past week. The price increase comes as a record 119 million people are forecast to travel this holiday season and 107 million will travel by car. This week’s national average is a penny less than a month ago and eight cents less than a year ago.
According to new data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), gasoline demand rose slightly from 8.81 million barrels per day last week to 8.92. Meanwhile, total domestic gasoline stocks rose from 219.7 million barrels to 222, while gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 9.9 million daily.
The EIA has also tallied the impact of this year’s hurricane season and reports that unplanned outages of crude oil production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico due to storms averaged 295,000 barrels per day in September and 110,000 in November, accounting for 16% and 5%, respectively, of total crude oil production from the Gulf in those months. However, the impact at the pump was relatively muted as prices popped by a few pennies before resuming their seasonal decline.
At the close of Wednesday’s formal trading session, West Texas Intermediate rose 50 cents to settle at $70.58 a barrel. The EIA reports that crude oil inventories decreased by 0.9 million barrels from the previous week. At 421.0 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 6% below the five-year average for this time of year.
Motorists can find current gas prices nationwide, statewide, and countywide at gasprices.aaa.com.
AAA East Central is a not-for-profit association with 69 local offices in Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia serving 2.7 million members. News releases are available at news.eastcentral.aaa.com. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
