Columbia, SC (WLTX) -- The gasoline price monitoring website ColumbiaGasPrices.com shows that gas prices in the Columbia area have fallen 9.5 cents per gallon, averaging $3.67 per gallon.

Last week's change outpaces the national gas price average drop of 9 cents per gallon, and compared to the same week one year ago, local are 12 cents higher per gallon.

"Only one other time in the last few years have we seen the national average drop so significantly in the course of just a week, and that other time was in May 2011," said GasBuddy.com Senior Petroleum Analyst Patrick DeHaan.

"Looking back at our data, we only see that prices dropped considerably more in autumn 2008 when the economy slipped into a recession. Given the circumstances with this latest weekly decrease- that it has nothing to do with recession- is significant." he said.