The average U.S. retail gasoline price has resumed its decline following a week of stability. The price of regular gasoline slipped to $1.64 per gallon, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge report Friday. Prices had remained at or near $1.66 per gallon for well over a week prior to the recent drop. AAA attributed the decline to seasonal factors, in which "holiday demand for gasoline starts draining from the market and the slowest period of the year for fuel consumption - January and February - gets underway." The current price is far below the year ago level of $2.98 a gallon and the record $4.11 a gallon reached on July 17.

On Wednesday, the price of crude oil slipped $3.63, or 9.3%, to settle at $35.35 per barrel, after crude inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for crude futures contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, reached 28.7 million barrels in the week ended Dec. 19, the Energy Information Administration reported. It was the highest since at least April 2004, when the government started collecting Cushing data.

Meanwhile, the Energy Department reported that total U.S. crude-oil stockpiles, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, fell for the first week in 3, down 3.1 million barrels to 318.2 million for the week ended Dec. 19. Analysts surveyed by energy information provider Platts had been looking a weekly increase of 1.5 million barrels. Gasoline supplies rose by 3.3 million barrels in the latest week, while distillate stocks increased 1.8 million barrels.

By the close, January reformulated gasoline fell 7.4% to 79.27 cents per gallon. January heating oil fell 9.7% to $1.1983 per gallon. Natural gas for January delivery rose 3% to $5.91 per million British thermal units.