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Heading into Labor Day weekend, gas prices continued to fall over the past week nationwide, but the rate is slowing, according to GasBuddy.com, a crowd-sourced gas and diesel price app and website.

Kentucky’s average price per gallon has dropped to $3.47, down two cents from last week and 39 cents from a month ago but is still 63 cents per gallon higher than a year ago at this time. Nationwide, the average is now $3.82, which is five cents lower than last week and a decrease of 37 cents last month.  However, that is 69 cents higher than last year.

The GasBuddy data was compiled from more than 11 million individual price reports covering over 150,000 stations nationwide and are as of mid-day on Tuesday.

“The national average has declined for another week, extending the slide for the eleventh straight week,” said Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “Gas prices are now $1.20 per gallon lower than mid-June with Americans spending $450 million less on gasoline every day as a result.”

He notes the news is not all good for our area when it comes to predicting prices down the road, especially with the fire at the Whiting, Indiana, refinery last week.

“Some issues have developed that we’re keeping a close eye on, including the shutdown of the largest refinery in the Midwest. While that refinery may get back online sooner rather than later, it’s not impossible that down the road the situation could impact prices in the region. For the rest of the country, however, we’ll continue to see prices moderate.  This is of course subject to hurricane season, and it does appear that the tropics are starting to see some activity, so there’s no guarantee the decline will continue.”

The Energy Information Administration says crude oil inventories fell 3.3 million barrels last week, 6% below the five-year average for this time of year. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve decreased 8.1 million barrels, 27% below its year ago level. Gasoline production dropped to 9.4 million barrels per day, while distillate fuel production rose to 5.2 million barrels per day. Total U.S. petroleum inventories are now down 43.3 million barrels from a year ago, 3.4% lower.