Average gas price drops below $3 a gallon

— -- The national average price of a gallon of gasoline has fallen below $3 for the first time since February.

The average price for a gallon of regular gas was $2.991 Saturday, according to the AAA's daily survey of up to 100,000 self serve gas stations by the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. That's down from $3.040 Friday.

A year ago, the national average price of a gallon of gas was $2.81, according to AAA. A month ago, it was $3.835.

Gasoline prices have been sliding along with crude oil prices since July, when gasoline hit a peak of $4.114.

According to the survey, gas was the least expensive in Oklahoma, with a gallon of regular averaging $2.58. Other cheap states were Missouri and Kansas, while the most expensive was Alaska, with a gallon averaging nearly $3.92. Hawaii and California also ranked high.

Gas prices likely will fall further, and figure to hit $2.50 to $2.60 a gallon if oil goes down to $50 a barrel as some analysts suspect.

While motorists welcome the decline in price, they are wary given the huge fluctuations the past couple of years, says Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychologist at San Francisco's Golden Gate University who has studied how high oil prices have affected Americans' buying behavior.

"People have learned that they can't trust gas prices to stay low," she says.

She says she doubts motorists — who cut fuel consumption as prices rose — will return to their old ways, even as prices have come down.

"Everywhere you go, be it the store, the diner, whatever, you hear people talking about there gas costs and how they need to cut back," David Robinson, 67, of Lakewood, N.J., said recently as he was getting coffee at a convenience store. "You still hear it, even though gas keeps dropping."

The drop in gasoline prices comes as crude oil rose Friday, rallying above $71 a barrel on speculation that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Courntries might slash output to try to stop crude's downward spiral.

Light, sweet crude for November delivery rose $2 to settle at $71.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier rising as high as $74.30. On Thursday, prices lost $4.69 to settle at $69.85 a barrel.