Many are angered when they look at the price for a gallon of gas these days. Personally I just feel a bit old. I rememberpeople getting upset about paying a dollar for a gallon, when ten bucks was enough to get my poorly-maintained Buick Century down to Berkeley and back. GasBuddy.com has put up a great map that shows prices broken down by counties all across the 48 contiguous states. A couple of clear trends crop up: the Northeast, California, and the upper Midwest have high gas prices, an the flyover has relatively low prices.

I’ve heard claims in the past that California pays extra for gasoline due to the strict emissions standards imposed by our state government. The idea here is that we can only use gas produced specifically for California, that we do not benefit from the market competition that includes all the other states. I’m not aware of any meaningful market competition driving down fuel prices anywhere else in the world, so I too a quick look at another colorful map, this one from API:

It is like a fuel-pricing Rosetta Stone. California’s state gasoline tax is fully $0.255 higher than that in Texas, $0.315 higher than in Wyoming. Gas prices in California were as low as $3.93 in some parts of California for the day shown (Memorial Day), and as high as $3.81 in parts of Wyoming, only $0.08 less after taxes. On the further end of the spectrum, we see $3.81 per gallon gas in most of Texas and $4.11 in most of California (the Bay Area and Los Angeles numbers). Adjusting for the state tax difference, Texans win out by a measly five cents.

So Wyoming, benefitting fully from the splendors of market competition, saves eight cents per gallon by taxing 32 cents less in tax, Texas saves thirty cents per gallon by taxing 25 cents less in tax. The difference? Texas is also a major source of the fuel. California has oil fields too, no doubt, but the biggest differentiating factor here looks like it’s happening at the state capitols, not on the spot markets.

Oregon is a bit of an anomaly, but they don’t let people pump their own gas there. All the other prices are presumably self-serve.

Hat tip to Infosthetics for the GasBuddy link.