Politics, the strengthening dollar and a tumbling stock market are some of the reasons cited for the dropping price of gasoline and home heating oil.
Since July, the statewide average gasoline price has dropped from a high of more than $4 to $3.31 a gallon for regular yesterday, according to Eleanor Baker, spokeswoman with AAA in North Andover. The price is the lowest it's been since April and shows no sign of slowing its downward trend.
In New Hampshire, gas also is selling at prices that haven't been seen in a while. At the Rockingham Gas Z-Mart on Route 108 in Newmarket, the price was $2.79 a gallon.
Meanwhile, home heating oil has gone down from a high of $4.59 over the summer to about $3.49, according to one local home-heating oil company.
"We're all enjoying lower prices," Baker said, adding that the price drop for gasoline was unexpected since everyone thought the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico would disrupt supply and boost prices.
"We thought some of our suppliers would be re-routed down South where there were shortages," she said. "But it seems like that didn't happen and our supply was really strong here, so we weren't affected."
Meanwhile, the dollar is stronger, meaning imports cost less. Plus, demand has dropped now that summer is over and people won't travel until Thanksgiving. She added that speculation in the oil futures market also has slowed down somewhat.
"All that adds up to lower gas prices for us," she said. Looking forward, however, "it's anybody's guess" what will happen.
Local residents are happy that at least one major piece of their budget costs less.
"I'm confused but I'm happy," said Patty Lowenhaupt of Andover, as she topped off her tank with 10 gallons at Haffner's on Route 125 in North Andover. "I saw $3.19 and said, 'I haven't seen that in forever.'"
At Prime Energy in Haverhill, station manager Youss Abdl wandered out to the pumps around 3:15 p.m. and changed the signs from $3.11 to $3.09 a gallon for regular.
"We do this for our customers," he said. He also does it because Prime is locked in a gas price war with Irving Blue Canoe just down the street, which was selling gas for just a few cents more.
Tony Amico, manager of Ted's Stateline Mobil in Methuen, had his own theory about why gas prices are dropping.
"It's political," he said. "You can thank your friend Barack Obama."
He said he was selling gas for $3.69 a gallon a few weeks ago, and is now selling it at $3.29, and it's dropping every day.
As soon as the election is over, he said, gas prices will start going back up again. "It will change. Or we'll have another hurricane. We're all getting screwed."
Frank Laratonda, manager of the One-Stop Retail Shop on Route 28 in Salem, N.H., said he dropped his prices 6 cents overnight from Tuesday to yesterday after his supplier, Draper Energy of Wilton, told him of another price cut.
"They keep telling us it's got to do with the stock market," he said. "We were told Monday it was going to go up a couple of bucks, but it didn't, so I don't think anybody really knows."
Jeff O'Hora, a manager with Draper Energy, which services 25 to 30 locations mostly in Southern New Hampshire, said gas prices are down because speculators aren't buying energy futures as much as they have in the past and the slowing economy in China has led to less demand for petroleum products there.
Sean Cota, former president of the New England Fuel Institute and a member of the executive board of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, said speculators caused the spike in energy prices, and are also responsible for the drop.
Since last week, traders have been getting out of the commodity markets and moving into cash, such as CDs. That has dropped the price of oil, which sold yesterday for $87 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after reaching a high earlier this year of $147 per barrel. Cota expects it to drop even more, and said he thought it would soon go into the "mid-$40-per-barrel range."
That would help home heating oil customers as well as drop prices for drivers.
Howie Glynn, founder of B&H Oil Co. in Salem, N.H., said the price he charges his customers has gone down from $4.59 in July to $3.49 a gallon yesterday.
"I didn't expect it to drop," he said. "But with everything else going down in the economy, it's forcing oil down."
He said while his customers are happy about the lower prices, the main questions he gets is how to make their homes more energy-efficient and how to improve the efficiency of their boilers.
He said the volatility isn't unprecedented. He said the same thing happened in the 1970s, except that back then, "there was no product. We were allocated how much we could sell. It was federally controlled."
The one downside of the falling price of home-heating oil is that people who locked in the high price in the summer, when oil was at its peak, still have to pay that price.
"We sold a lot of lock-ins this summer," he said. "They pay that price because that's the price we paid."
He said that some companies sell what's called "downside insurance," so that the customer is covered in case of a price drop, but this year it cost 14 to 18 cents a gallon, so he didn't even offer it.
Pat Seymour of Newton, N.H., buys her home-heating oil from Victory Oil in Newton, but said she didn't lock in the summer price.
"I would never do that," she said, adding, "I feel bad for the people who did."
