Gas Prices Rise Above $3 in 9 States, Others Likely to Follow

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 11:54PM EST · Published May 9, 7:35AM EDT

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Gas Prices Rise Above $3 in 9 States, Others Likely to Follow — © Thinkstock

The average price of a gallon of gasoline nationwide has hit $2.82, up from $2.34 a year ago. As the United States pulls out of nuclear proliferation treaty with Iran, oil prices likely will rise, and perhaps rapidly.

American gas prices will consequently go higher, and they are already above $3 in nine states. Another five are less than a dime lower than that.

The states with gas prices over $3 are topped by California at $3.64. It has 12% of the nation’s population. Next are Hawaii at $3.63, Washington at $3.31, Alaska at $3.26, Nevada at $3.25, Oregon at $3.23, Utah at $3.13, Idaho at $3.12 and Pennsylvania at $3.01.

State gas taxes in Pennsylvania add more than 77 cents to the price of gasoline, and California state gas taxes add more than 74 cents to the pump price. The national average is just over 52 cents, of which 18.4 cents is federal tax.

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Crude oil closed down following the announcement Tuesday that the United States was leaving the Iran nuclear deal, but prices jumped about 2.5% in electronic trading Wednesday to more than $71 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude. That’s the highest price for crude oil since late 2014.

Venezuela, once a producer of nearly 2.5 million barrels of oil every day, has dropped to a production level of around a million barrels a day, well below its agreed quota to meet the OPEC production cutbacks that have been in force since January of 2017. The country’s May 20 elections are virtually certain to result in the re-election of President Nicolas Maduro and, almost equally certainly, the imposition by the Trump administration of further sanctions on the country. The likely result is another increase in crude oil prices.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that pump prices would average $2.97 for the month of June and $2.90 for the entire 2018 summer driving season running from April through September. For the full year, the EIA expects the average price of a gallon of gasoline to be $2.79.

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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.