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Fueling Up For Holiday Travel? Cross Gas Prices Off List Of Worries

Riza Nugraha
/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rnugraha/

With millions of people hitting the road this Christmas it’s going to be very busy across the nation’s highways—but drivers will be paying less to travel this year.

Nationally, the average price hovers around $2.00 a gallon for gas, and GasBuddy’s Patrick DeHaan says Indiana falls right in step.

“We have not seen an average pump price in Indianapolis over two dollars a gallon since early November,” DeHaan says.

Dehaan says this year roughly 88 percent of those traveling this holiday season will be driving, and roughly two-thirds of them plan to drive at least 200 miles round trip.

Because of low prices this year Gas Buddy's holiday travel survey estimates that American's will spend about $1.6 billion less for year-end travel.

Locally there is a noticeable difference in prices from recent years.

While $2.00 a gallon gas is well above the historic low prices of the year, Dehaan says drivers should remember it was just a few years ago that Christmas gas prices were well above $3.00 a gallon.

While Indiana is typically a volatile state when it comes to gas prices things should stay below the $2.00 mark until at least Valentine’s Day.

“I think that jumpy trend will continue but prices will remain seasonally low for the next one to two months. It’s possible that you could see some days where some stations are $1.50, $1.40,” he says. “Maybe even a dollar-thirty like we saw yesterday in Crawfordsville.”

In the long run Dehaan says that continuously low oil prices could force oil companies to make cuts in production to maintain their bottom line, a price that could get passed back to the consumer.

 

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