Gas Prices in 1982

The average price fell 5.0% in 1982, to $1.30 a gallon, the first decline in the annual average since 1972. After inflation the drop was 10.5%, to $4.34 in 2025 dollars.

Demand for oil fell as the economy stayed in recession for most of the year; the downturn that began in July 1981 ended in November 1982, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The Federal Reserve describes the 1980 and 1981–82 recessions together as the most severe downturn since the Great Depression. Production outside OPEC was also rising.

With prices falling, OPEC set its first formal production quotas in March 1982, a combined ceiling of 18 million barrels a day divided among its members, to support its official price. The ceiling did not stop the decline: the organization cut its official price the following March. Federal price controls had ended in early 1981, so 1982 was the first full year in which U.S. gasoline prices were set without them.

After adjusting for inflation, the 1982 average of $4.34 is almost exactly what 2022 cost: $4.35. The pump prices were very different, $1.30 against $3.95, a measure of how much the dollar lost over the forty years between them. In the national ranking, 1982 is 10th-highest after inflation and 28th-highest before it.

Set against the start of the 1970s, 1982 shows how far the two oil shocks moved prices. From 1972 the pump average rose 260.8%, more than tripling, and the real price rose 56.3%. The following decade reversed much of that: 1992 came in 13.8% under 1982 in current dollars and 40.7% under it in 2025 dollars. By 2002 the nominal average was back only a little above the 1982 level, up 3.5% at $1.35, and the real price had fallen 44.5%, close to half.

Texas again had the lowest state average, $1.23, with Missouri, Delaware and Pennsylvania close behind. The four highest were Hawaii ($1.54), Alaska, Nevada and Mississippi, with Hawaii 23.6¢ over the U.S. average. Nevada, which ranked 49th from the cheapest, would swing to the other end of the table within five years: by 1987 it was 2nd, behind only Georgia.