Weekly Mass. Gas Prices Drop For 2nd Time In 2012

The average gas price in Massachusetts is down 4 cents this week, to $3.86 a gallon for self-serve regular, according to AAA Southern New England.

It's just the second time this year — along with a decrease of 2 cents on March 12 — that the week-over-week average price has dipped. Every other week in 2012 has seen the average price increase in Massachusetts, according to AAA.

The state's current average of $3.86 for regular gas is the same as the national average. The $3.86 price, AAA says, is 9 cents more than the state’s average price was a month ago and 3 cents more than the state's average price at this time in 2011.

This week's decline in Massachusetts follows a drop in gasoline futures and the national expectations of many industry analysts, who have seen market conditions easing.

"What you're seeing in the market is some back-pedaling from the hysteria we saw in February and March," Sander Cohan, a principal at ESAI, a Wakefield-based energy-consulting firm, told The Wall Street Journal last week.

The Lundberg Survey, another measure of gas prices, recorded its first dip in the average national price since December, CNN reported yesterday.

Last month, with gas prices steadily climbing in Massachusetts, WBUR's Curt Nickisch spoke with a researcher at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, who said that “[g]asoline prices have a much larger impact psychologically on consumers than it actually has on people’s wallets,”