Largest Gas Price Drop So Far This Year in Montana

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - Montana gas prices have now dropped seven weeks in a row. Patrick De Haan is the head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy and he provided the current numbers.

“Average gasoline prices in Montana have fallen 7.6 cents per gallon in the last week, averaging $3.32 per gallon today,” De Haan said. “Prices in Montana are 17.2 cents per gallon lower than a month ago and stand 86.6 cents per gallon lower than a year ago.”

As of Monday morning, many stations in Missoula had their prices set to around $3.37 per gallon.

According to GasBuddy price reports, the cheapest station in Montana was priced at $3.07 per gallon yesterday while the most expensive was $4.55 per gallon.

Montana is currently ranked 13 th in the U.S. when it comes to the average price of gas, which is the same as last week.

“The national average price of gasoline has fallen 6.9 cents per gallon in the last week, averaging $3.15 per gallon today,” De Haan said. “The national average is down 26.2 cents per gallon from a month ago and stands 70.5 cents per gallon lower than a year ago. The national average price of diesel has fallen 3.4 cents in the last week and stands at $3.57 per gallon, the lowest level since January 2022, over 900 days ago.”

According to De Haan, gasoline prices continue to crumble across nearly the entire nation, with average prices below $3 per gallon in 18 states.

“65,000 stations are selling below that psychological mark,” De Haan said. “With the change to winter gasoline happening today at most stations across the country, the outlook is bright for the national average to continue to make a run at falling to $2.99 per gallon for the first time since 2021. But while nearly all states are seeing prices drop, refinery maintenance and some outages at California refineries have led to tight supply and rising prices—a situation I hope can be remedied by the end of the month and help California join in on the decline."

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