Had enough of high prices?

Take a look at the gas pump.

The average, self-serve price for a gallon of regular gasoline is now about $2.32, according to a survey yesterday by the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources.

That’s down from about $2.56 a gallon last week, a drop of more than 9 percent.

It’s also down from the all-time high of about $4.12 a gallon reached on June 16.

Gas prices haven’t been this low since February of last year.

The reason, mainly, is demand, said Lloyd P. Albert, senior vice president of public and government affairs for the AAA Southern New England auto club.

“We are seeing an unprecedented drop in prices at the pump,” he said yesterday.

And that’s mainly because demand has fallen, he said. “Worldwide and domestic demand is down significantly from the same period last year,” Albert said.

In general, demand in October was down nearly 9 percent when compared with the same period a year ago, he said.

As motorists drive less, prices have fallen. And drivers have a range of prices from which to choose.

For example, yesterday’s survey showed that prices for self-serve, unleaded gasoline ranged from a high of about $2.46 a gallon to a low of about $2.20 a gallon.

Overall, the lower prices represent “welcome news for the motoring public,” especially after drivers have struggled with the sky-high prices in recent months, Albert said.

Also yesterday:

•The average price of home-heating oil was about $2.79 a gallon in yesterday’s survey, down from about $2.81 a gallon a week ago. (The all-time high, of about $4.75 a gallon, was reached July 14.)

•The survey showed the average price of diesel fuel to be about $3.48 a gallon, down from $3.66 a gallon last week.

Nationally, the worsening economic climate pushed crude futures downward even further yesterday, one bit of good news for consumers amid a flurry of dour economic reports, the Associated Press reported.

After trading above $69 per barrel, light, sweet crude for December delivery tumbled $3.87 to settle at $63.91 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Gasoline futures fell nearly 9 percent with the release of the latest data suggesting to economists that the United States is in recession.

Declining gasoline futures have led to sharp drops in the price of gasoline. The price for a regular gallon of gasoline dropped to $2.41 nationally yesterday, down more than 30 percent from last month, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express.

Gas was selling for as little as $1.93 a gallon in Tulsa, Okla.

A prominent Canadian economist even suggested that oil prices have been overlooked as a trigger for the global economic slowdown.

CIBC World Markets economist Jeff Rubin said yesterday that four of the past five global recessions were preceded by an oil shock, and this time it’s no different.

Rubin said if triple-digit oil prices started the recession, then $60 oil prices may be what ends it.

Oil industry analysts had said that the booming economies of India and China would pick up any slackening of demand if Western nations went into recession. That view has weakened in recent months, as the economic crisis in the United States spread across the globe.

Credit Suisse yesterday forecast the sharpest drop in global oil demand since 1982.

And Credit Suisse analyst Mark Flannery said the latest economic data from China reveals a slowdown that is far worse than originally forecast. Credit Suisse, in a research note, reduced its estimates for next year’s Chinese oil demand growth from 4 percent to near zero. It predicts some recovery in 2010, back to 5.4 percent.

Flannery lowered his average-price forecast for benchmark crude to $60 a barrel next year from $75, and to $80 a barrel for 2010, down from a previous forecast of $100 a barrel.

“A slower China means a slower global economy,” Flannery said in the report, noting that he’s also made reductions to his oil-demand forecasts for other parts of Asia and the Middle East.

Declining expectations for demand come after the largest single monthly price drop for crude since futures were first traded on Nymex 25 years ago.

Victor Shum, an energy analyst at consultancy Purvin & Gertz in Singapore, said he saw continued “downward volatility in oil futures.”

“I expect oil to trade within the $60- to-$70 range in the near term,” Shum said. The U.S. employment data due later this week is likely to underline the economy’s weakness and will cap gains in oil prices, he said.

That report is due Friday.

With Associated Press reports

ndowning@projo.com