Mo. gas average moves to No. 2 in nation

Led by several local filling stations, Missouri’s gas average moved to the second-lowest spot in the nation.

With its average this morning of $1.80 per gallon, the Show-Me State ranked only behind Oklahoma, which led by a tenth of a cent. At $2.77 per gallon, California was at the bottom of GasBuddy.com’s list of the lowest average in the United States.

This morning, the Macadoodles store in Republic was selling the lowest priced gas in Missouri at $1.59 per gallon. Both Springfield Sam’s Club stores tied with 11 Nixa stations for third at $1.61 per gallon.

During the past week, Missouri’s average dropped 5.5 cents, following a 1.7-cent increase the prior week. The national average ticked down 1.2 cents to $2.04 per gallon for the week ended yesterday, according to a news release.

Missouri’s average decreased 2 cents during the past month and 42.1 cents during the past year. The national average yesterday was 15.6 cents higher than the same day a month ago but 34.9 cents lower than the same day in 2015.

“It’s especially rare in April to see the average price of gasoline dead even or slightly lower in some places than where it was in the prior week,” said Gregg Laskoski, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy, in the release. “As encouraging as that news certainly is for U.S. motorists, unfortunately, it’s more of an anomaly than a trend. But it’s still a very good harbinger of the savings 2016 is expected to bring,”

West Texas Intermediate crude oil was trading at $40.52 per barrel as of 10:36 a.m., compared to a 52-week range of $29.85 to $65.73. Light sweet crude oil futures for May were trading at $40.55 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.