Drivers can expect "significantly lower" gasoline prices this summer, but only if gas futures drop below the key level of $2.90 a gallon, professional trader Jim Iuorio told CNBC on Wednesday.
Chalk up the decline in gas prices to a divergence between gas and crude oil, Iuorio explained. Over the past month, gas has dropped some 5 percent, while crude oil has gained about 5 percent. In January, gasoline prices skyrocketed following an array of refining and maintenance issues while the price of oil fell. The move was highly unusual, so now the markets are seeing what's called a mean reversion, meaning prices are returning to the mean or average.
In addition, a government report said U.S. crude oil inventories grew to their highest level since 1990. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported crude stocks rose 2.71 million barrels last week. The rise was slightly more than the build of 2.2 million barrels expected in a Reuters survey of analysts and put U.S. commercial inventories at 388.62 million barrels, the most since 1990 and close to the record 391.9 million barrels reached in 1982, the year the EIA started tracking inventories.