SPRINGFIELD, Ore. -- Gas prices in Western Oregon may drop a few cents in the coming weeks following the Biden Administration's decision to release one million barrels of oil a day from the nation's strategic petroleum reserves, according to AAA Oregon's director of government and public affairs, Marie Dodds said.

"I would expect gas prices to fall a little bit in the short term, so I would anticipate that we could see prices move a few cents lower in the coming days," Dodds said.

In Eugene and Springfield, the average price for one gallon of unleaded gas fell two cents this week, to $4.73, according to Dodds. Oregon's average fell one cent per gallon to $4.71 and the nationwide average fell one cent to $4.23.

Dodds said there are other factors besides the Biden Administration's new policy that help determine crude oil prices. Examples of those include the ongoing situation overseas in Ukraine and the oil industry's pandemic recovery.

"We've heard this over and over, supply chain issues, labor shortages. These types of issues are also impacting the oil and gas industry and when you think about what's entailed in producing a barrel of oil, there's a lot of infrastructure, a lot of personnel, pipelines, refineries, drilling operations," Dodds said. "It's not something where you can magically flip a switch and say, 'Okay, oil production is going to resume back to where it was.'"

University of Oregon economics professor Tim Duy weighed in on the administration's new policy.

"The idea here is that hopefully over time, it will put downward pressure on oil prices and then eventually that will translate through to gas prices," Duy said.

Duy said there are multiple factors affecting U.S. gas prices. He said there tends to be a lag between a drop in oil prices and the time it takes drivers to see the price decrease at the pumps. David Bernell, an associate professor at Oregon State University's School of Public Policy said.

"With any luck, people would start to feel it in the next few weeks," Bernell said.

He said for oil and gas prices to go down significantly, there needs to be a greater supply of oil than demand.

"There's also a certain, what I would call a fear premium that we pay a little extra for oil and then gasoline prices when there's a certain amount of uncertainty or fear of what the future might hold with regard to some kind of military conflict," Bernell said.

Watch KEZI 9 News on weekdays for reports from Mike Cerullo. He also produces weekend newscasts.

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