US gas prices are expected to fall over the next couple of years as fuel consumption levels off, indicating that vehicle fuel-economy gains may have positive long-term effect on everyone's wallets.
Regular fuel prices, which on average rose 2.8 percent in 2012 to $3.63 a gallon, will fall to $3.55 a gallon this year and will decline another 4.5 percent to $3.39 in 2014, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) says.
And while the vehicle-buying public isn't getting any smaller, fuel consumption is expected to remain basically unchanged at about 8.72 million barrels a day through 2014.
Either way, the percentage of an average household's budget spent filling up neared a 30-year high last year, so any news of a fuel-price decline is good news for consumers. So far this year, gas prices have risen more than 20 cents a gallon to about $3.55, according to American Automobile Association.
Last year, new cars sold in the US had a record-high fuel economy of 23.8 miles per gallon, up 6 percent from a year earlier, according to the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI).
Check out the EIA's set of graphs and reports here.
US gas prices to fall over next two years originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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