The average price for regular gasoline at U.S. pumps fell 3.49 cents in the past two weeks to $3.6876 a gallon, according to Lundberg Survey Inc.

The survey covers the period ended May 16. It’s based on information obtained at about 2,500 filling stations by the Camarillo, California-based company.

The average retail price is 3.10 cents higher than a year ago, Lundberg said. Gasoline has risen 34.17 cents since Jan. 10.

“This decline follows 12 straight weeks of rising prices,” Trilby Lundberg, president of Lundberg Survey, said Sunday in a telephone interview. “In the near term, there is a good chance that retail prices will continue dropping, but probably only modestly.”

The highest price in the lower 48 states among the markets surveyed was in San Francisco, at $4.17 a gallon, Lundberg said. The lowest was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where customers paid an average $3.32 a gallon. Regular gasoline averaged $3.88 a gallon on Long Island, New York, and $4.14 in Los Angeles.

Gasoline futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 2.9 cents, or 1 percent, to $2.9735 a gallon in the two weeks ended May 16.

U.S. gasoline production jumped 6.8 percent in the week ended May 9 to 9.61 million barrels a day, the most since the period ended Dec. 20, according to Energy Information Administration data.

Crude inventories rose 947,000 barrels to 398.5 million, the second-highest level in weekly reports published since 1982.

West Texas Intermediate crude gained $2.26, or 2.3 percent, to $102.02 a barrel on the Nymex in the two weeks to May 16.