US petrol prices have fallen for a 15th straight day, with the national average for regular petrol at $4.02 a gallon on Sunday — the lowest since mid-August, and the latest leg of a slide driven by collapsing oil prices.
The AAA national average stood at $4.0203 on November 8, according to AAA’s daily fuel gauge, down from $4.0371 on Saturday — which itself was the 14th consecutive daily fall and the lowest since August 12. A week ago the average was $4.1732, and a month ago $4.3612. A year ago, it was $3.0731 — so drivers are still paying almost a dollar more per gallon than last autumn, even after two weeks of falls.
AAA said on November 5 that the average had fallen 12 cents in a single week, as crude oil dipped into the high-$80s to low-$90s a barrel. Before 2026, the national average had never gone above $4 in November at all — and it remains the highest ever for this time of year.
The cheapest and dearest states
The gap between states is wide. California remains the most expensive at $5.7512 a gallon, followed by Hawaii at $5.6634 and Nevada at $5.0814, according to AAA’s state averages for November 8. North Carolina is the cheapest at $3.2733 — helped by a gas-tax holiday that suspended the state’s 41-cent-per-gallon tax from October 10 to November 30 under the Relief at the Pump Act. The spread between California and North Carolina is $2.48 a gallon.
Analysts expect the national average to fall below $4 next week. GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan said so in comments reported on November 6, and Gulf Oil’s Tom Kloza expects it within about 10 days. Diesel, meanwhile, is averaging $6.1929 a gallon.
Why prices are falling
The driver is crude oil. Brent settled at $98.32 a barrel on Friday after losing about 16% in a week — its steepest weekly fall since the start of Covid — as hopes of a US-Iran deal removed the war premium that had pushed prices above $117. Cheaper crude takes time to reach the pump, but the direction is now firmly down.
For households heading into Thanksgiving, the timing helps: the holiday is the busiest driving period of the year, and every 10 cents off a gallon saves the average driver real money over a long weekend trip. Petrol demand is also rising — the Energy Information Administration reported gasoline demand up last week from 8.35 million barrels a day to 8.80 million — but the crude price fall is doing the heavier work. The national average has risen $1.055 since the attack on Iran, according to AAA figures cited this week, a reminder of how far prices climbed before this slide began.
