Lower gas prices: more positive than negative

gascosts

Did you see what I saw this morning while driving to one of my four part-time jobs?

The price of regular unleaded gasoline has dipped to less than $2 per gallon in Amarillo.

Good news, yes? Well, I think so.

Motorists such as my wife and me do not enjoying shelling out big bucks for gasoline. Our Prius hybrid has more than paid for itself in fuel efficiency. We’ll keep for as long as we possibly can. Heck, it might live me.

But I get the downside of the lower prices, particularly in states — such as Texas — that rely on oil revenues to fund things such as, oh, state government.

State Rep. Four Price, an Amarillo Republican, told the Rotary Club of Amarillo the other day that the next Texas Legislature is likely to receive some not-so-cheery news from the comptroller’s office when it convenes in January 2017. It will be that oil revenue will be down sharply from the current budget cycle and that the state likely will not have the projected revenue surplus it got when the 2015 Legislature convened.

Gas prices plummet

I get that. I also understand that $100-per-barrel oil is more profitable to pump than, say, $42-per-barrel crude — which is about what it’s drawing these days.

But you know what? I am not going to waste too much emotional energy worrying about those ancillary effects when my household is getting a significant break in its weekly expense obligation.