Expert: Arizona gas prices could drop below $2 by 2016

PHOENIX — As the year comes to a close and the holiday shopping season approaches, there could be good news awaiting consumers: Lower gas prices.

Bernard Weinstein with the Maguire Energy Institute in Dallas said national average gas prices, including those in Arizona, could slip below $2 per gallon in 2016.

“We’ve had a huge increase in supply in the United States; 100 percent increase in oil output in the past decade thanks to hydraulic fracturing,” he said Monday. “You put it all together and we’re facing a glut that is pushing down prices.”

Weinstein said the fall in gas prices will benefit Arizona because the state does not boast a large number of jobs in the oil industry.

“It’s a very different picture in North Dakota, Oklahoma or Texas,” he said. “There are 32 states that produce a commercial amount of oil or natural gas. To a varying degree, they’re all being affected. So except for people losing jobs in the oil patch, cheaper energy is probably a good thing.”

Texas has lost 200,000 jobs as prices slipped over the last 18 months. The state gets between 15-20 percent of its annual revenue from the oil industry.

Monday’s national average was $2.29 per gallon. Arizona’s was two cents higher.

At this time last year, Arizonans were paying nearly $3.25 per gallon.

Related

Fauci’s decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment tees up a legal debate and a contempt voteAuthorities identify victims, suspect killed in stabbing that led to Gilbert Police shootingHome where astronaut Neil Armstrong’s boyhood dreams of flying took off is for saleTupac Shakur was killed in Las Vegas in 1996. Here’s who was there that nightDuane ‘Keffe D’ Davis, charged with organizing the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur, is on trial28 indicted in Arizona gun trafficking ring that funneled AK-style rifles toward Mexico