If you were to take a cross-country road trip today, the price you’d pay for a gallon of regular unleaded gas would range from $3.38 in Oklahoma to $5.82 in California.
Gas prices have always differed sharply across state lines, which means the surging prices this spring — associated with the war in Iran — are hitting people harder in some states than others.
The differences arise from many factors: where the gas comes from, how it gets from the refinery to the pump, how much states tax it, and even the ingredients in the gas. The gas that you buy in one state is different from the gas you might buy in another, and it has traveled a different journey to make it to the fuel pump.
Here’s a look at which states have the highest and lowest gas prices, and why prices vary so much.
The highest and lowest gas prices right now
Prices change day to day. While some states tend to have lower and higher prices, the exact price can vary quite a bit.
To show the prices on just one day, here are the averages in each state on Wednesday, as reported by AAA.
And here are the states with the lowest and highest average prices for all of 2024, the most recent year with data available from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
How gas is delivered
The relatively low prices in the Gulf Coast and Southeast have a lot to do with proximity to the refineries that convert crude oil into gasoline. The Gulf Coast has the most productive refineries in the country, meaning that gas sold in the region has to travel the shortest distance and tends to come in at the lowest average price. The U.S. also has refineries in New Jersey, Oklahoma, the Chicago area, California and elsewhere.
From the refinery, gas travels — usually by pipeline, sometimes by barge — to storage and to blending terminals, eventually making its way to your gas station by truck.
“The farther you are away from the refining center, the farther you are from the pipeline, the more expensive it is to get fuel and truck it someplace,” said Scott Berhang, who leads the fuel wholesalers marketing group Sigma.
On the East and West Coasts, domestically refined gasoline is supplemented by imports of finished gasoline, as well as its components.
Major pipelines don’t cross the Rocky Mountains, and ships don’t deliver gas to inland states, so the Rocky Mountain region tends to have higher prices, because its options for getting gas are more limited.
The regionalized distribution chain means that events can disrupt prices in one place but not another — a hurricane or a manufacturing issue that shuts down part of one refinery might cause a price spike in just one region.
But national and international events, like the war in Iran, also influence the price that markets set for fuel.
“You can be in a situation where gasoline prices are skyrocketing, but there’s no supply issues whatsoever. It’s a function of the markets,” Berhang said. That, he said, is happening now. “At some point, [the war] could translate into supply shortages. That could happen. But we’re not really there yet. I talk to my members all over the U.S. They’re not seeing any supply issues. There’s no problem getting fuel. Everything is normal.”
Gas taxes and environmental policies
All states add a tax to the price of gas to pay for road maintenance. When the tax is significantly higher or lower in adjacent states, it can account for a big jump in fuel prices as soon as a driver crosses a state line.
California’s tax is the highest, at nearly 71 cents per gallon, followed by Illinois at 66 cents and Washington at 59 cents. Alaska’s is the lowest, below 9 cents. The D.C. area is in the middle of the pack: 35 cents in the District, 41 cents in Virginia and 46 cents in Maryland.
Some cities also add a local fuel tax.
Other policies can affect the cost of gas in a state. California, Washington and Oregon have environmental policies meant to discourage carbon-intensive activities like driving gas-guzzling vehicles. Estimates of how much these complex programs affect fuel prices vary. California’s cap-and-trade system might add the most, about 23 cents per gallon.
What’s in the gas
Gas isn’t just one formula anywhere you go.
Federal law requires that certain regions, during the summer months, use only a special formulation that causes less air pollution. The rule has been a massive success in recent decades, greatly improving the quality of the air that tens of millions of Americans breathe. The special gas, which generally costs more, is required along much of the Eastern Seaboard, from New Hampshire to Virginia, as well as several other areas around the country.
The Environmental Protection Agency suspended some of those rules in March in response to the surge in fuel prices associated with the Iran war.
Some states set their own requirements for the composition of gas to reduce pollution.
On top of high taxes and unusually vigorous climate change laws, California also has a unique formulation requirement for gas that few refineries produce. That, too, leads to more volatility in California’s gas prices.
Robert Kleinberg, a researcher at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, said more expensive gas is, in part, a payment for better air quality.
“People don’t use the word ‘smog’ much anymore, but my gosh, you couldn’t see the mountains from Pasadena, which is not that far away. And it was just painful to breathe,” he said about the decades before reformulated gas requirements. “California really had to do something about that.”
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