Gas prices keep plunging in Massachusetts: ‘People are starting to see prices below $4 a gallon’

While temperatures have skyrocketed in the last month and especially in recent days, a nosedive in gas prices has continued at a rapid rate, dropping another dime in the last week.

The Massachusetts average for regular gas on Monday was down to $4.37 a gallon, a 10-cent fall from a week ago and 41 cents lower than one month ago, according to AAA Northeast. The average in the Bay State has dropped 67 cents since the record-high price of $5.04 a gallon in mid-June.

But while the current average is $4.37 per gallon, many drivers across the region are now filling up their tanks for less than $4.00 a gallon — which was unimaginable earlier this summer.

“People are starting to see prices below $4 a gallon routinely, and that’s great,” AAA Northeast’s Mark Schieldrop told the Herald on Monday. “You feel that psychological relief when you see that number change.”

The national average will soon drop below $4 per gallon, he noted.

“I’d say by the end of August we should be there,” Schieldrop said of the Bay State’s average going under $4 a gallon. “It seems like the norm for the past month has been dropping 1 to 2 cents a day.”

He cautioned, however, that a major hurricane could interrupt the declining trend for gas prices.

After prices surged with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. demand for gas cratered. American demand is about 9% less than a year ago, Schieldrop said. That has led to the continuing drop in pump prices, as oil prices have plunged.

“Demand is still way off from where we normally are at this time of the year,” Schieldrop said. “It looks like peoples’ behavior changes have stuck even with gas prices declining.

“Many people are pessimistic about the economy in general, so we may not see a surge in demand over the next month just because prices are lower,” he added.