NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Drivers are starting to see relief at the fuel pump as gasoline prices have slipped about 4 to 6 percent from the record highs reached just before fighting began in Iraq two weeks ago.
The AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge, which surveys more than 60,000 self-serve gas prices nationwide daily, reports an average price of $1.647 a gallon, down another 1/10 of a cent from Tuesday. The record high was $1.722 a gallon March 18, the day before the start of the U.S. attack on Iraq. The average diesel fuel price was $1.709, down from a March 15 record of $1.829.
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The Energy Department's survey of gas prices completed this past Monday puts the average gasoline price at $1.649 per gallon, down from $1.728 March 17. The region with the biggest decrease is the Midwest, where prices have fallen to $1.524 from $1.683 two weeks earlier.
Prices still are higher than a year earlier, when the AAA survey put gasoline at $1.368 and the DOE survey put it at $1.371.
But the run-up in prices that accompanied the uncertainty before the start of the war has begun to ease. Prices also fell when Allied forces started their attack on Iraq in January 1991 during the first Gulf War, after four months of rising prices following Iraq's invasion of its oil-rich neighbor Kuwait.
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