With the summer driving season well behind us, the demand for gasoline in Iowa is dropping along with the prices at the pump. A report from the Iowa Department of Agriculture shows the price for a gallon of unleaded regular gas was down about three-cents on average last week, according to Harold Hommes , a spokesman for the department’s marketing bureau.
“We continue to be running roughly three to four cents below the national average on retail unleaded gasoline,” Hommes says. “Iowa has traditionally been about average or slightly under the average price.”
While the statewide average price for gasoline is $3.40-a gallon, it’s a different story for diesel. Retail diesel prices rose a nickel a gallon. Hommes says part of the reason for higher diesel prices is because farmers are using more to finish up the harvest. In addition, transportation has been interrupted from a supplier in western Iowa because of this year’s Missouri River flooding.
Farmers often use a lot of liquid propane to dry their crops before it’s put into storage, which can boost L-P prices in the fall. Hommes says that’s not the case this year.
“Sometimes you think that this time a year, it might want to bump up, but the ag sector did not use anywhere near the propane that we had anticipated,” he says. L-P prices remained steady in the latest report at a statewide average of a $1.91 a gallon.
Hommes says Iowans who use the diesel-based fuel oil for home heating saw prices go up about four-cents to$3.54 a gallon