This holiday, stuff your tank with cheaper gas. It’s heading below $3.

Gas prices are continuing to fall ahead of the Christmas holiday weekend, making it cheaper to drive over the river and through the woods this year.

That’s great news for the 5.8 million Florida residents projected to take a year-end holiday road trip, said Mark Jenkins, spokesman for travel club AAA.

Monday’s average per-gallon price in Florida was $3.03, according to AAA’s weekly Gas Price Update. That’s 12 cents less than a week ago, and 55 cents since mid-November.

It’s 20 cents less than last Christmas, but 83 cents more than Christmas 2020, when much of the world economy was still hobbled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A big reason prices are falling now doesn’t exactly bring tidings and good cheer: Traders are worried that a global recession could be around the corner, and that would reduce economic activity and lower demand for oil, keeping prices down.

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Still, a return to around $3 a gallon (with many South Florida gas stations under $3) could be seen by consumers as a return to “normal,” which GasBuddy.com head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan said “could certainly boost economic sentiment going forward.”

There’s no doubt that $3 gas leaves more money in consumers’ pockets than the near-$5-a-gallon price we were paying just six months ago, driven by Western European embargoes of Russian oil after the Ukraine invasion. Then, traders feared that the embargoes would sharply curtail global oil supplies, but Russia has managed to find other trading partners, reducing the embargoes’ impact.

De Haan sees the per-gallon average falling below $3 over the next week or so and then stabilizing as long as U.S. oil prices remain in the $70-a-barrel range. The U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate crude, was trading at around $75 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Monday after closing at a 12-month low of $71.02 on Dec. 9.

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The current price is well below the $92.61 a barrel close on Nov. 4 and far less than the 2022 high of $123.70 set on March 8.

In South Florida, average per-gallon prices were $3.10 in Broward County, $3.25 in Miami-Dade County and $3.27 in Palm Beach County, according to AAA.

But savvy motorists can always find lower prices if they know where to look.

The lowest price noted by GasBuddy members on Monday was $2.81 at Rocket Fuel, 5600 Washington St., Hollywood. Several other stations in the Davie and Hollywood areas were selling at $2.83 and $2.85, particularly around Sheridan Street, Stirling Road and State Road 7.

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In Miami-Dade, a Murphy Express station at 13730 NW 27th Ave. in Opa-locka was selling gas for $2.79, while several stations in Homestead and Miami Gardens were at $2.81.

Stations in Lake Worth had the best prices in Palm Beach County on Monday: $2.76 at Mobil, 3890 State Road 7 and $2.78 at Chevron, 4213 S.R. 7.

Holiday travelers looking for the state’s lowest gas prices will have to head to the Panhandle, where numerous stations in and round Eglin Air Force Base in Fort Walton Beach were selling at $2.54.