Sometimes we make thing complicated. There are a lot of conspiracy theories when it comes to gas prices. When gas prices are high, it is Big Oil and OPEC. When gas prices are low people want to blame it on political manipulation where gas prices are only down because there is an election coming up.
It looks like the real reasons, at least within the last year, is because of the weather. Many money managers and hedge fund managers were betting that we would have a bad hurricane season and a cold winter like what happened last year with Hurricane Katrina. This in turn drove energy prices up.
Now everyone is concluding that the hurricane season and winter this year will be mild. This new weather outlook is causing prices to go down. Everyone is now predicting that there will be plentiful supplies of oil and gas, and thus energy prices have gone down.