Montana Gas Prices Ease Up: Expect Another Drop Soon

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - Montana gasoline prices steadily increased for eight weeks in a row before stabilizing the past month. Now prices are slowly dropping, with hopefully bigger drops on the way. Patrick De Haan is the head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy and he provided the current numbers.

“Average gasoline prices in Montana have fallen 3.1 cents per gallon in the last week, averaging $3.53 per gallon today,” De Haan said. “Prices in Montana are 2.8 cents per gallon lower than a month ago and stand 6.0 cents per gallon higher than a year ago.”

As of Monday afternoon, many stations in Missoula had their prices set to around $3.53 per gallon.

According to GasBuddy price reports, the cheapest station in Montana was priced at $3.23 per gallon yesterday while the most expensive was $3.94 per gallon.

Montana is currently ranked 28th in the U.S. when it comes to the average price of gas, down three spots from last week.

“The national average price of gasoline has fallen 1.9 cents per gallon in the last week, averaging $3.63 per gallon today,” De Haan said. “The national average is up 8.4 cents per gallon from a month ago and stands 4.3 cents per gallon higher than a year ago. The national average price of diesel has fallen 2.9 cents in the last week and stands at $3.98 per gallon.”

According to De Haan, average gas prices have started to cool off in many areas.

“For now, few Americans need to worry that gas prices are going to skyrocket; the risk appears to be behind us, with relief coming in the weeks ahead," said De Haan. "While the latter half of the summer could potentially see hurricane-related issues, I do sense we've hit the top for now, and Americans should be optimistic that this summer will be very similar to last year, in line with our early 2024 expectations and likely not featuring record gasoline prices.”

De Haan added that he is quite excited that the seasonal rise in gas prices appears to be over.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

Gallery Credit: Sophia Crisafulli

Filed Under: social post