NEW YORK (AP) - Retail gasoline prices tumbled yesterday to the lowest level in nearly four years. And while crude futures rose, analysts believed it was a temporary pause in an extended, downward arc as the recession spreads.

"We're paying about a billion dollars per day less than we were in July" for gasoline, said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service. "We could probably bail out some banks and maybe even some of the auto companies with the savings."

But cheap gas is bittersweet news for an economy that shed millions of jobs this year. Pump prices were driven down mostly because Americans are staying home more. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said the travel habits of Americans are "fundamentally changing" as drivers clocked 9 billion fewer miles in October, even as gas prices plunged.

Awful holiday retail sales, job uncertainty and shrinking global trade all suggest that demand for energy from both businesses and consumers will continue to fall into next year.

"By Tuesday or Wednesday, we could easily see crude oil roughly $3 below what it is right now," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates.

New evidence that Opec members had cut production and a weaker dollar boosted crude prices yesterday in light trading.

Light, sweet crude for February delivery rose $2.36, more than six percent, to close at $37.71 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Trading was closed on Christmas Day.

In London, February Brent crude rose $1.76 to settle at $38.45 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

Tumbling crude prices have led to enormous declines in the price of retail gasoline.

At the pump, US retail gas prices fell six-tenths of a penny overnight to a new national average of $1.642 a gallon yesterday, well below the year-ago average of $2.981 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. The last time retail prices dipped this low was in February 2004, Kloza said.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which accounts for about 40 percent of global supply, has announced crude production cuts totaling more than four million barrels per day as it tries to stop the decline in prices. Opec members, however, have a history of ignoring announced quotas and crude traders waited for concrete evidence that the 13-nation group was tightening the spigot.

Analysts pointed to a release from the United Arab Emirates advising clients that it would reduce supply almost immediately. The state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company said it would cut production of some grades of crude by as much as 15 percent next month.