New Jersey residents got an early holiday gift -- the lowest gas prices in five years.
"It's nice to get change on a $20 instead of spending two $20s," said John Mapes, of Haddonfield, as he fueled his SUV at a Haddon Township gas station. "It certainly helps. Of course, I don't know how long-term it'll be."
Gas prices in New Jersey dropped below $1.50 per gallon for the first time since June of 2003, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration statistics.
Light, sweet crude for January delivery fell 39 cents to $43.32 a barrel in midday trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after dipping below $43 in earlier electronic trading. Prices have rebounded from last week's intraday low of $40.50 per barrel, the cheapest oil has been since December 2004.
In the past 15 years, fuel prices were lowest in November of 1998, when the price of gas dropped to about $1 per gallon, energy agency data shows.
The highest gas prices in that same time period happened in June, when motorists paid an average of $4.10 per gallon.
"We can't predict what oil prices will be for 2009 until March, but as long as the economy isn't doing well, the gas prices will continue to be lower," AAA Mid-Atlantic spokeswoman Tara Woodside said.
Despite the falling fuel prices, motorists are not taking back to the road.
Woodside said there were 600,000 fewer vehicles on the road over the Thanksgiving holiday and Americans are using 3 percent less gas than last year.
"The United States has decreased its gasoline consumption," Woodside said.
It is a worldwide trend, according to the energy agency.
In its short-term outlook released Tuesday, the agency said it expects global oil consumption to decline by 50,000 barrels a day this year and by 450,000 barrels a day in 2009, well below earlier forecasts on both counts.
Just last month, the federal energy agency projected global consumption to increase by 100,000 barrels a day in 2008 and to remain flat in 2009. Total world consumption is between 85 million and 86 million barrels a day, the agency said.
Should the projections prove true, it would mark the first time in three decades that world crude consumption declined in consecutive years, it said.
James Jones, president of Carl's Haddonfield Sunoco, said his customers began disappearing when gas prices soared this summer.
"They haven't come back," Jones said. "People are driving less and they're not planning trips. We didn't get half the volume at Thanksgiving that we got last year."
The Haddon Avenue gas station and full-service repair shop sits a short distance from two PATCO Hi-Speedline stations -- Haddonfield and Westmont.
"I see more and more people taking the train into Philly," Jones said.
