Gas prices drop

The monthly report on gas prices has more good news for Iowa drivers. DNR fuel-price analyst David Downing says it might all depend on where you pull in to the pump.Downing says prices spiked for crude-oil during tense times for Iraq a few weeks ago, but now have fallen again. And he says OPEC nations are “cheating” on their quotas, selling more crude oil than agreed-upon limits, as proven by the traffic in oil tankers.Tanker traffic shows while we’re below where we should be in US crude-oil inventories, a lot of fuel will rolling in by late November and December from this surge of overproduction by OPEC. And Downing says winter chills in other continents also get credit for keeping our gas prices down in Iowa. It’s a cold winter than normal in Europe, and when they refine crude to make heating oil, a byproduct is gasoline, which gets dumped in the US market, holding down prices. The retail price of a gallon of regular self-serve unleaded ranged early this week from a low of a dollar-36 in the northeast part of the state to a high of a dollar-47 a gallon in the northwest.