Gas for $3.99 in Fresno? Here’s where to look — and what drivers can expect in 2022
Gasoline prices in the Fresno market have slipped a bit over the past week, to an average of $4.50 per gallon for regular unleaded on Wednesday morning.
That average, scoured from customer price reports at stations across Fresno and Fresno County, is about 3.5 cents per gallon lower than a week ago, and almost 12 cents from a month ago, according to gas-price tracking website GasBuddy.com.
Any bit of decline represents relief, however slight, for drivers at the gas pumps after fuel prices climbed in to a 2021 high of $4.63 per gallon on Nov. 21. That was within two pennies of the all-time high average price of $4.65 per gallon from mid-2008, when the region was in the throes of an economic recession.
GasBuddy.com and its mobile app let customers report pump prices in real time at stations nationwide.
In the Fresno market, drivers could find gasoline for a cash price of less than $4 per gallon on Wednesday morning – if they were willing to hunt or go out of their way for it.
GasBuddy customers reported that the Costco membership store on West Shaw Avenue in northwest Fresno had regular unleaded for $3.99 per gallon. Unleaded regular was also priced at $3.99 per gallon a few miles away, at the EZ Trip convenience store on Parkway Drive, near Herndon avenue and Highway 99.
A cash price of $3.99 per gallon was also reported across town, at the Belmont Car Wash at Belmont and Clovis avenues in southeast Fresno.
The highest price reported by GasBuddy members for regular unleaded on Wednesday morning in Fresno was $4.89 per gallon, spotted at several stations across the city.
Despite this week’s downward trickle for average gas prices, more increases are likely ahead in the new year, said Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy.
“It doesn’t look great,” DeHaan told The Fresno Bee in a telephone interview Wednesday. “I think that what we see in the year ahead are more of the struggles we had this year.”
The current picture
While fuel prices in California area among the highest in the country, the modest decline in prices in the Fresno area reflects a similar pattern as the national average, said DeHaan.
“Nearly every state saw average gasoline prices decline last week as millions of Americans took to the road for holiday travel,” DeHaan wrote Monday in a blog post. The national average in the U.S. on Wednesday was $3.28 per gallon, down 2.1 cents from a week ago and 11.7 cents from a month ago.
But the local average on Wednesday was also almost $1.40 per gallon more than it was a year ago.
The national average price on Christmas Day was the highest ever for Dec. 25, what DeHaan described as “an ugly new record for the holiday” at $3.26 per gallon. But, he added, “motorists shouldn’t get too worked up about it – the downward direction in gas prices should persist into this week in most areas.”
What’s ahead?
Drivers can brace for higher prices after the new year due largely to basic Economics 101 principle of supply and demand.
“We’ve got an improving economy and strong demand that has come back more quickly than expected” from the COVID-19 pandemic mean that prices are expected to rise in the first half of 2022, DeHaan said Wednesday.
“As we see oil prices continue to move up, that’s likely to drag gas prices a little higher than what we see today,” he added. “Some areas of California could see the average price get to $5 per gallon” for regular unleaded.
DeHaan said that threshold could be reached in the period from March to May, when refineries will change over their production to comply with state regulations requiring a switch to a cleaner summer blend of gasoline.
“Since COVID, we first saw a drop in production and a drop in supply” that corresponded to a drop in demand as California and other parts of the country went on lockdown in the spring and summer of 2020, DeHaan said. “Now we see demand roaring back, and supply has not kept up.”
Some refineries had shut down operations because people were driving so much less last year, he added, and not all of them have reopened. As a result, “we have less breathing room this year,” DeHaan said. “It’s another COVID-induced challenge that could cause prices to be higher (next) year.”
This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 12:32 PM.
