Oil price drop spurs optimism

It’s a phrase uttered sparingly, if at all, in recent years: There’s good news on oil and gas prices.

A confluence of recent events has oil analysts optimistic about the future price of crude oil and its derivatives, primarily gasoline and heating oil.

Some are predicting a sharp drop during the next year in global crude oil prices – perhaps a 40 percent fall from the $78-a-barrel high in July – that could return gasoline prices to $2 a gallon. But even the pessimists among the optimists think $2.50 a gallon is a reasonable goal.

Indeed, in the past month in the Connecticut River Valley, there is evidence that some of that decline has happened as prices at the gas pump have dropped more than 30 cents per gallon.

The Republican (Massachussetts)