Gas Tops $4 in California: Here’s the Price in All 50 States

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 12, 8:25AM EDT

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Gas Tops $4 in California: Here’s the Price in All 50 States — © Art Wager / E+ via Getty Images

A cyberattack has shuttered the huge 5,500-mile Colonial Pipeline, which transports over 100 million gallons of fuel from Texas to New Jersey every day. Gasoline prices, which have been stable, have reached multiyear highs. Thirteen states have gas prices that have cracked the barrier of $3 for an average gallon of regular. Extraordinarily, the average price for a gallon or regular in California has risen above $4.

In fact, as the supply of gas has been halted and could be for days, predictions that gasoline will top $3 nationwide for the average gallon of regular have grown. Recently, the carefully followed analysts at GasBuddy forecast a 70% chance per-gallon gas prices will reach $3 by Memorial Day. The company added, “The last time the national average reached the $3/gal threshold was over 2,300 days ago, on October 10, 2014, but did get close in 2018, when the national average reached $2.97 per gallon.” That prediction did not take into account the pipeline challenge.

Additionally, oil prices have risen an extraordinary 83% plus since the U.S. presidential election. The price was $36 a barrel at the end of November, and at $66 it trades near the highest price in a year.

Between the price of oil and the pipeline disaster, gasoline prices also have surged. Today, the average price for a gallon of regular in the United States was $3.01, up from $2.86 a month ago.
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The best predictor of gasoline prices is oil prices, despite the pipeline challenge. Oil prices almost always outweigh refinery costs, transportation costs and state gas taxes.

Gas prices by state vary from the national average for several reasons. The first is proximity to refineries. States near the huge refineries along the Gulf of Mexico tend to have the lowest prices in the country. Notably, the five states with the lowest per-gallon gas prices are Mississippi ($2.66), Texas ($2.72), Louisiana ($2.66), Alabama ($2.76) and South Carolina ($2.76). The transportation costs from refineries to nearby areas shaves down the average price of gas, compared with much of the rest of the nation.

Another primary factor in prices is gasoline taxes. According to the American Petroleum Institute survey of state gas taxes as of January 1, the U.S. average is $0.5523 a gallon. States with low gas taxes include Missouri ($0.3582), Mississippi ($0.3719) and New Mexico ($0.3738). The states with the highest gas taxes are California ($0.8145) and Pennsylvania ($0.7710).

Thirteen states currently have average prices for a gallon of regular at or over $3. California’s $4.12 price clearly is affected by its gas tax. In Hawaii, the price of $3.79 is affected by a relatively high gas tax at $0.6524 per gallon. However, the cost of transportation to islands that are 2,500 miles from the west coast is also a major contributor to Hawaii’s price. The price for a gallon of regular in Washington is $3.53. Its gas tax is a high $0.678 per gallon. Nevada ($3.55), Oregon ($3.35), Utah ($3.28), Alaska ($3.23), Illinois ($3.23), Idaho ($3.18), Arizona ($3.13), Pennsylvania ($3.09), Colorado ($3.01) and New Jersey ($3.02) fill out the list.

This is the price of gas in every state, based on data from GasBuddy:

Mississippi: 2.662
Louisiana: 2.663
Oklahoma: 2.719
Texas: 2.719
Arkansas: 2.731
Alabama: 2.760
South Carolina: 2.760
Missouri: 2.786
Minnesota: 2.789
Tennessee: 2.789
North Dakota: 2.800
North Carolina: 2.825
Kansas: 2.829
New Hampshire: 2.843
Virginia: 2.845
Massachusetts: 2.848
Wisconsin: 2.848
Montana: 2.853
South Dakota: 2.864
Florida: 2.865
Ohio: 2.869
Kentucky: 2.875
Vermont: 2.887
West Virginia: 2.887
Delaware: 2.888
New Mexico: 2.890
Rhode Island: 2.890
Iowa: 2.894
Georgia: 2.905
Wyoming: 2.915
Nebraska: 2.916
Maryland: 2.926
Michigan: 2.933
Maine: 2.959
Indiana: 2.966
Connecticut: 2.984
New York: 2.991
Colorado: 3.011
New Jersey: 3.016
San Juan: 3.019
Washington, DC: 3.045
Pennsylvania: 3.093
Arizona: 3.133
Idaho: 3.183
Illinois: 3.227
Alaska: 3.232
Utah: 3.282
Oregon: 3.347
Washington: 3.535
Nevada: 3.553
Hawaii: 3.788
California: 4.123

Click here to see which states have the highest and lowest gas taxes.
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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.