These Are the States Where Gas Is Over $5

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 8, 10:30AM EDT

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These Are the States Where Gas Is Over $5 — © WendellandCarolyn / iStock via Getty Images

A year ago, it was hard to imagine the average price of a regular gallon of gasoline could hit $5. In most of the country, it has, and in a number of states the prices have jumped higher than $5. The price has added to the consumer’s inflation burden, and by itself, it threatens a crippling of consumer spending.

It is not news that the primary cause of the gas price increase is the surge in crude oil prices. Last August, it sold for $64 a barrel. Today, that price has risen to $120. Several experts have made the case that it will be $150 by Labor Day. The trouble with supply, caused in large part by the embargo of Russian oil because of its invasion of Ukraine, is an all but permanent problem. Global oil giants will take months or longer to ramp production, and some may not consider it a benefit to shareholders.

One wild card is refiners. How quickly will they move to the production of more gasoline? The process will be slow, and once again these companies need to decide if it is in their best financial interests.

According to the AAA Fuel Gauge, gas prices are just below $5 nationwide for the average gallon of regular. That is up from $3.06 a year ago.
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GasBuddy tracks data on the price of regular by state. In 16 states and the District of Columbia, it is above $5. In California, it is $6.36. A contributing factor is that gas taxes in many of these states are high, thought that number has been fixed in most states for years.

The states have at least one thing in common. They are far from the large refineries on the Gulf of Mexico and south of Houston. This means transportation costs of the gas are high. The list is dominated by Midwestern (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan), northeastern (Maine and Massachusetts) and northwestern states (Idaho, Oregon and Washington).

These are the states where gas is above $5 a gallon:

Massachusetts (5.006)
Idaho (5.015)
New Jersey (5.023)
Maine (5.027)
Pennsylvania (5.035)
Ohio (5.076)
District of Columbia (5.106)
Arizona (5.166)
Michigan (5.217)
Indiana (5.250)
Hawaii (5.404)
Washington (5.449)
Oregon (5.451)
Alaska (5.490)
Nevada (5.548)
Illinois (5.609)
California (6.363)

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

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.