Wyoming
Laramie County gas drops 4 cents, now Wyoming’s second cheapest
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A 4-cent drop made Laramie County’s gas price the second cheapest in Wyoming this week.
The nation’s average price of gasoline also fell 1.4 cents over the last week, standing at $2.99 per gallon, according to GasBuddy data compiled from more than 12 million individual price reports. The national average is down 14.8 cents from a month ago and 6.6 cents from a year ago.
The national average price of diesel has increased 2.5 cents in the last week to stand at $3.663 per gallon.
AAA reports a national average price of $3.03, down 2 cents from last week. Wyoming’s state average fell 1 cent to $2.92, AAA said.
“The national average once again briefly dipped below the $3 per gallon mark, but the drop will be short-lived,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “Gas prices are likely to rebound soon in the Great Lakes states due to ongoing refinery challenges, while a new snag at a California refinery may slow the pace of declines on the West Coast. To top it off, OPEC+ announced another boost to oil production for December over the weekend, though they also signaled a pause in further increases from January through March.
“For now, expect the national average to hover in the low-$3 range, potentially drifting lower once refinery issues are resolved.”
Laramie County’s average price of $2.68 is Wyoming’s second lowest, up two spots from last week. The cheapest fuel in the county on Monday is $2.61 at Sam’s Club, 1948 Dell Range Blvd., followed by $2.63 at Maverik, 140 Gardenia Drive, and Loaf ‘N Jug, 534 Vandehei Ave., according to GasBuddy reports.
Wyoming’s cheapest fuel for the 11th straight week is in Natrona County, which has an average price of $2.56, down 9 cents from last week. Converse County toppled Campbell and Albany counties to offer the state’s third-cheapest average at $2.70.
Also included in GasBuddy’s report:
OIL MARKET DYNAMICS
Over the last week, oil markets have been a bit more tame, balancing new sanctions on Russian oil exports with OPEC’s weekend decision to again raise oil production for the month of December, keeping oil prices in check. In early trade, WTI crude oil was down 3 cents to $60.95 per barrel, a slight drop from last Monday’s $61.53 per barrel fetch. Brent crude oil was also slightly lower in early trade, down 4 cents to $64.73, down from $65.96 last Monday. “Oil prices have moved nearly sideways in recent days. While there is rising skepticism that the latest sanctions on Russian oil companies remove substantial oil supply from the market, large US oil inventory draws last week kept prices supported,” added Giovanni Staunovo, UBS commodities analyst, in an e-mail. “The OPEC+ decision to pause their supply increases during the seasonal weaker Q1 demand period is also giving moderate support.”
OIL AND REFINED PRODUCT SUPPLIES
The EIA’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report for the week ending October 24, 2025, showed U.S. oil inventories fell by 6.9 million barrels, and are about 6% below the seasonal average for this time of year, while the SPR rose 500,000 barrels to 409.1 million. Gasoline inventories fell by 5.9 million barrels and are about 3% below the five-year seasonal average, while distillate inventories fell by 3.4 million barrels and are about 8% below the five-year seasonal average. Refinery utilization fell 2.0 percentage points to 86.6%, while implied gasoline demand, EIA’s proxy for retail demand, rose 470,000 bpd to 8.924 million barrels per day.
GAS PRICE TRENDS
The most common U.S. gas price encountered by motorists stood at $2.99 per gallon, up 10 cents from last week, followed by $2.89, $2.79, $2.69, and $2.59, rounding out the top five most common prices.
The median U.S. gas price is $2.89 per gallon, up 2 cents from last week and about 10 cents lower than the national average.
The top 10% of stations in the country average $4.41 per gallon, while the bottom 10% average $2.37 per gallon.
The states with the lowest average prices: Oklahoma ($2.48), Texas ($2.48), and Louisiana ($2.53).
The states with the highest average prices: California ($4.61), Hawaii ($4.43), and Washington ($4.23).
Biggest weekly changes: Indiana (-13.3¢), Texas (-10.0¢), Michigan (-9.8¢), Washington (-9.0¢), Iowa (-8.8¢)
DIESEL PRICE TRENDS
The most common U.S. diesel price stood at $3.69 per gallon, up 10 cents from last week, followed by $3.49, $3.79, $3.59, and $3.39, rounding out the top five most common prices.
The median U.S. diesel price is $3.59 per gallon, up 4 cents from last week and about 7 cents lower than the national average.
Diesel prices at the top 10% of stations in the country average $4.61 per gallon, while the bottom 10% average $3.04 per gallon.
The states with the lowest average diesel prices: Texas ($3.15), Louisiana ($3.23), and Mississippi ($3.24).
The states with the highest average diesel prices: Hawaii ($5.21), California ($5.10), and Washington ($4.94).
Biggest weekly changes: New Jersey (+14.6¢), Florida (+10.4¢), Oklahoma (+7.7¢), Wyoming (+6.9¢), Nebraska (-6.8¢)
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Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
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Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
Wyoming
Political storm in Wyoming as far-right activist caught handing checks to lawmakers
Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.
The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.
“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”
Questions around the checks were soon swirling, and answers weren’t forthcoming. When asked what Bextel gave to her, Brady told a reporter for local outlet WyoFile: “I can’t remember.”
Then Bextel herself addressed the incident. “I raised $400,000 in the last election cycle for conservative candidates, and I will be doubling that amount this year,” Bextel wrote on Facebook on 11 February. “There’s nothing wrong with delivering lawful campaign checks from Teton county donors when I am in Cheyenne.”
Since then, it has emerged that the checks came from Don Grasso, a wealthy Teton county donor, who told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that he wrote the checks for Bextel to deliver to 10 Freedom caucus-aligned politicians. Grasso said the checks were intended as campaign contributions, and were not tied to specific legislation. It is unclear how many checks were ultimately delivered, but two of four confirmed recipients include the speaker of the house, Chip Neiman, and John Bear, the former head of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
The Wyoming house has formed a legislative investigative committee, and the Laramie county sheriff’s office said they’d open a criminal investigation.
Bextel declined to answer questions from the Guardian. Brady, McCann and Bear did not respond to requests for comment.
Neiman said he considered the criticism a “wraparound smear campaign”. He said: “It never once crossed my mind that this was bribery.
“These legislators, myself included, are now guilty until we can prove that we’re innocent. How is that right in this country? Isn’t that a little bit backwards?”
The scandal has highlighted long-standing divisions in Wyoming’s Republican party, which in recent years has seen a growing divide between old school, more moderate conservatives and a harder-right Freedom Caucus.
Several former Republican lawmakers forcefully condemned their colleagues for accepting the checks, and a local Republican party branch called for the lawmakers’ resignations.
Ogden Driskill, a Wyoming Republican senator, told the Guardian he does not consider Bextel’s actions to be illegal, but that “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should”.
Bextel has spent years pushing against housing mitigation fees in Wyoming, and Driskill noted that she distributed the house floor checks just days before a bill she had publicly supported was set to be heard. Bextel was registered as a member of the press, not as a lobbyist when she delivered the checks.
“Ethically and morally, it’s bankrupt to a massive degree,” Driskill said.
Neiman said that he and other legislators who received checks have supported similar bills in the past: “Bribery is paying somebody to do something they would not otherwise do.”
Nationally, the 2024 election cycle saw record-spending from the mega-wealthy, as well as dark money groups. Wyoming followed the trend, in a tense red-on-red primary season.
For those gearing up to campaign this year, Teton county, the richest in the US, and Bextel’s picturesque home turf, is an essential stop. Its extreme wealth gives it a foothold on the national level as well. Palantir chief executive Alex Karp and Donald Trump attended an annual Republican leadership fundraiser at Jackson Hole in 2024, and JD Vance attended the same one in 2025.
Bextel pulls dollars from Teton county into the Freedom Caucus side of Wyoming’s conservative split. She hosted no-press-allowed meet and greets earlier this year benefitting leading candidates for Wyoming’s governor and open US House seat.
In an interview with the Open Range Record, a media network she co-founded, Bextel said controversy around the checks was solely because she was making “even playing field” in Wyoming against the state’s more moderate Republicans, who she calls “George Soros” candidates. She said that she will be sure to keep raising money – just away from the legislative floor.
“I guess I’m gonna ask all the gentlemen and gentleladies to step outside the Capitol while I hand them a check,” Bextel said. “Let me be clear: I’m doubling down.”
But it’s not just wealthy local donors putting their weight behind the factions. Last election cycle, out of state groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on anonymous and often inaccurate mailers.
“These actors, especially from the far right, they like to push the bounds of the norms,” said Rosa Reyna Pugh, an organizing and advocacy consultant at Western States Center, an Oregon-based non-profit focused on democracy in the western United States. “They like to see what policies they can kind of push, and see where they can play a piece,” Reyna Pugh said.
While Neiman and Driskill fight politically, they do agree on one thing: summer will bring an expensive and brutal campaign season.
“You’re going to see more dark money than you’ve ever seen. We’ve done absolutely nothing to enforce it. Our secretary of state has not even made a slight attempt to deal with it,” Driskill said. “You’re going to see lots and lots of outside money and I think you’re seeing it on both sides.”
As national questions swirl around pay-to-play politics and profiteering in the Trump administration, Provenza wants better for the Cowboy State.
“We should not be aligning ourselves with how the federal government is conducting itself or how federal elections conduct themselves,” Provenza said. “We owe something far better and more honest to the people of Wyoming than that.”
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