Only 6 States Have Gas Prices Below $2

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 9:42AM EST · Published May 9, 10:00AM EDT

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Only 6 States Have Gas Prices Below $2 — © Thinkstock

As oil prices rise, and the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline reaches $2.21 (against $2.04 a month ago), only six states still have gas prices below $2.

According to GasBuddy, those states are Oklahoma ($1.92), Missouri ($1.97), Kansas ($1.97), Louisiana ($1.98), Texas ($1.99) and Arkansas ($1.99). All of them are oil-rich states or relatively near clusters of refineries, like the huge ones south of Houston on the Gulf of Mexico.

Oil production by state alone does not mean low gas prices. Both gas taxes and proximity to refineries do. The average price for a gallon of regular in Alaska is $2.45. Most of its gasoline comes from refineries hundreds of miles to its south. The high price in Alaska is despite the state having the lowest taxes and levies in the nation at $0.3065 per gallon. The national average for these taxes and levies is $0.4865.

Among states with gas prices below $2, the gas taxes are less than the national average, according to the American Petroleum Institute. The taxes in Oklahoma are fourth lowest in the nation at $0.354 a gallon. In Missouri, they are fifth lowest at $0.357, and in Kansas $0.4242.

With oil prices above $45 a barrel, compared to $30 earlier in the year, gas prices in all states likely will be above $2 soon, and in some states the price is moving toward $3. In California, the price is already above $2.81.
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GasBuddy’s methodology:

With an army of more than 30 million users updating fuel prices throughout the United States and Canada and on-staff experts to interpret what it all means, no other source offers better insight, benchmarks and analysis than GasBuddy. More than 100,000 stations are seeing multiple price updates each and every day.

The GasBuddy Media site is designed to provide the press with multiple indices, rankings, and comparisons in one convenient location. Whether you cover fuel prices at the local, regional, or national level, no other site offers more insight at a glance than GasBuddy.

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.