Gas Drops to 99 Cents in Missouri

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 1:13PM EST · Published Feb 14, 8:40AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Gas Drops to 99 Cents in Missouri — © Thinkstock

As gasoline prices continue to fall, nearly in lock-step with crude oil, the price of an average gallon of regular, about $1.70 nationwide, has hit levels under $1.50 in some states and under $1.40 in some smaller geographic regions. But the lowest gas price in the United States is 99 cents in Randolph, Mo.

The Phillips 66 selling gas at this price is on the Mississippi, north of Kansas City.

The price is an anomaly. The next 40 stations on the lowest price gas list are in Oklahoma, mostly around Oklahoma City, according to GasBuddy. Gas prices in those stations range from $1.07 to $1.13.

Oklahoma and Missouri have one thing in common. They have the lowest state gas prices in the United States. Oklahoma’s average is $1.34. Missouri’s is $1.40, as is the average price in Kansas.

Despite a 10% spike in the price of crude last week, it remains near multiyear lows, often as low as $30. The price of crude has a 52-week low of $26.05 and 52-week high of $65.69. Despite rumors OPEC many tighten supply, Saudi Arabia continues to pump at or near capacity. Demand is slack worldwide, to some degree because of the slowdown in the Chinese economy.
[nativounit]
Another contributor to gas prices is proximity to gas refineries. Both Oklahoma and Missouri are close to several large ones, which include a huge cluster south of Houston on the Gulf of Mexico.

Finally, state and federal taxes affect gas prices from state to state. According to the American Petroleum Institute, the national average is $0.48 per gallon. Oklahoma is near the bottom of the list at $0.354, as is Missouri at $0.357. 24/7 Wall St. recently analyzed states with the highest and lowest gas taxes.

The price at the Phillips 66 station in Randolph is unusually low at $0.99. However, the station does sit in the region with the lowest gas prices in the country.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.