Gas Prices Hit $4 in All 50 US States for First Time, National Average Reaches Record High

Just three states – Georgia, Kansas, and Oklahoma – hadn’t crossed $4 a gallon on Monday, but they all saw jumps on Tuesday to hit that threshold, FOX News reported. 

Kansas still has the cheapest gas in the nation at $4.006 a gallon, while California has the priciest at $6.021 a gallon. 

Even oil-rich Texas, which is usually home to low gas prices due to the state’s low taxes and proximity to refineries, had an average price of $4.214 a gallon on Tuesday, just slightly below the national average of $4.523 a gallon. 

“The high cost of oil, the key ingredient in gasoline, is driving these high pump prices for consumers,” AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross said this week.

“Even the annual seasonal demand dip for gasoline during the lull between spring break and Memorial Day, which would normally help lower prices, is having no effect this year,” Gross added.

West Texas Intermediate Crude, the US benchmark, sat at $113.90 a barrel on Tuesday, slightly down from the high this year of $129.44 on March 7. 

The Joe Biden administration has blamed the gas price surge on Russia’s war in Ukraine and taken steps to increase domestic supply, including by releasing one million barrels of oil per day from the strategic reserve for the next six months and allowing the sale of gasoline that uses a 15% ethanol blend. 

Biden’s Department of the Interior, however, canceled an oil and gas lease sale for over 1 million acres in Alaska last week, citing a “lack of industry interest”. 

After the cancellation, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy said the Biden administration has “proved their lack of commitment to oil and gas development in the US”.

Biden and his allies have promoted what some characterize as anti-fossil fuel policies since the executive orders he imposed during his first hours in the presidency.