Gas prices below $2 a gallon in San Antonio, Oklahoma

Cars line up at the Fas Stop at at Vance Jackson Road and Spicewood Drive near Loop 410, where gasoline was selling for under $2.00 Friday. Cars line up at the Fas Stop at at Vance Jackson Road and Spicewood Drive near Loop 410, where gasoline was selling for under $2.00 Friday. Photo: Billy Calzada, Staff / San Antonio Express-News Photo: Billy Calzada, Staff / San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Gas prices below $2 a gallon in San Antonio, Oklahoma 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Drivers lined up to fill up their tanks with gas priced below $2 a gallon at one North Side convenience store.

The Fas Stop location at Vance Jackson Road and Spicewood Drive offered regular fuel at just $1.99, joining a handful of stations in Oklahoma that a price-watching group says are offering the lowest price in the nation.

That bargain has proven irresistible to some long lines of drivers coming from miles away to fill up.

A Fas Stop worker who answered the phone late Friday said a stream of customers had waited at the station’s four pumps for most of the day, with some people filling up and returning with another family vehicle.

One Oklahoma City station started the trend earlier this week at a new location as a way to thank residents who put up with construction.

Two nearby stations followed suit, becoming what Patrick DeHaan with GasBuddy.com said were the only ones in the United States with sub-$2 gas.

“When I first saw it, I thought it was a misprint,” Marcus Hendricks, a student who lives in south Oklahoma City, said while at the OnCue Express in southeast Oklahoma City, where the price was $1.99 per gallon for gas with a 10 percent blend of ethanol. “There were so many cars it looked like they were giving something away for free. They practically are.”

The nationwide average for a gallon of gas was $2.71 Friday, nearly $1 below this year’s peak of $3.70 in June. Gas hasn’t been this cheap since October 2010. In San Antonio, the average for a gallon of regular gas was $2.46, according to AAA’s website. The decline has been driven by falling global oil prices as supplies are high. Benchmark U.S. crude oil fell 68 cents to $66.11 a barrel in New York on Friday, after hitting $107 in June.

Gas prices are expected to keep falling nationwide, perhaps by as much as another 10 cents to 20 cents per gallon by the end of the year, AAA Oklahoma spokesman Chuck Mai said.

The statewide average in both Texas and Oklahoma was $2.48, tied for third-lowest in the nation behind Missouri’s $2.43 average and Mississippi’s $2.47. The highest prices were $3.81 in Hawaii, $3.47 in Alaska and nearly $3.12 per gallon in New York, according to AAA.

“The world is swimming in crude oil right now. And this of course is what is driving our pump prices in this country, that and good old-fashioned street corner competition,” Mai said. “It may not be a gas war, but it certainly is one-upmanship, or maybe in this case, one-downmanship.”

To check on gas prices locally, go to mySA.com/gasprices.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.