Baltimore motorists, even those running with low-fuel warning lights blinking, can be forgiven if they took the O’Donnell Street exit from Interstate 95 this week and promptly ignored the convenience store advertising $2.99 a gallon for regular unleaded gasoline. Sure, that may sound tempting, but less than 100 feet away is an independent gas station advertising the same fuel for $2.89. Not bad. Well, unless you find yourself at the High’s on Rogers Avenue in Ellicott City. According to the app GasBuddy, you can fill up for $2.69 a gallon over there.

It’s not uncommon for gas prices to fall in the autumn as demand declines and refineries switch to less expensive winter blends. But isn’t it amazing how little buzz there is about the cheapest fuel since May 2021? Call it human nature to ignore good news — or for certain Republican candidates for public office to stress the bad — but after gasoline prices peaked at more than $5 a gallon in June 2022, according to AAA Maryland, Free State motorists have seen a 40% drop in prices. No, it’s not as wild as the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when prices fell below $2 per gallon as demand bottomed out. But it is pretty darn close to the average over the past two decades — and better when you factor in inflation, given a $3 gallon of gasoline in 2024 is a greater value than a $3 gallon in 2011.

We aren’t suggesting everyone go out there and burn rubber in celebration, but politicians seem to have implanted some pretty unrealistic expectations in the voting/motoring public this presidential election year. First, Americans ought to remember that the government doesn’t set fuel prices; it’s mostly a matter of supply and demand and large events that can have an outsized impact, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, given Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter. And second, the U.S. remains a major petroleum producer — indeed, it’s the biggest at nearly 22 million barrels per day. So, for all the talk about electric cars and the green economy under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, we’re still a fossil fuel-run nation.

How did gas prices fare when Donald Trump was in the White House? He inherited two years of falling prices in 2017 and took actions to benefit the oil industry but nonetheless saw prices rise at first. But then the pandemic hit, the stock market crashed and gas prices fell dramatically. And yet, as Forbes recently noted in a review of the last 30 years of energy prices, the numbers at the pump were back to climbing again when he left office. Trump may be the oil industry’s preferred candidate, but voters should keep in mind that gas prices often rise and fall for reasons far beyond anything that happens in Washington, D.C., let alone the I-95 corridor.