Gas Prices in 1992

The average price rose 0.3% in 1992, to $1.12 a gallon, and fell 2.6% after inflation, to $2.57 in 2025 dollars. At the pump, the annual average has stayed between $1.12 and $1.14 since 1990.

Crude supply recovered as Kuwait rebuilt its production after the war, and OPEC output reached its highest level in more than a decade by the fall. U.S. prices were steady even as new fuel rules took effect. Phase II of the EPA’s summer volatility limits began on May 1, 1992, capping summer gasoline at 9.0 pounds per square inch, or 7.8 in some areas. From November 1992, under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, areas with high carbon monoxide levels were required to sell oxygenated gasoline, blended with ethanol or other oxygenates, in the winter months.

Both rules raised production costs for the affected fuel, but the effect on the national annual average was small compared with changes in crude oil. 1992 was the second consecutive year of real declines after the 1990 increase.

Twenty years before 1992 the pump price was about a third as high: from 1972 to 1992 it rose 211.1%. After inflation, though, 1992 was the cheaper of the two years, with the real price down 7.3%. The decade to 2002 was quieter: pump prices gained 20.0% and real prices lost 6.4%.

Twenty years after, the direction reverses. The 2012 average was 222.9% higher at the pump and 97.3% higher in 2025 dollars, close to twice the 1992 real figure of $2.57. In the national ranking 1992 is 45th-highest after inflation, within a cent of 1987 ($2.56), and 37th-highest before it.

Georgia’s $0.96 was the lowest state average by a wide margin; Missouri, next, averaged $1.01. The District of Columbia, at $1.29, was the most expensive jurisdiction outside Hawaii, where the average was $1.37, or 24.9¢ more than the country as a whole. Connecticut and Maryland ranked third and fourth from the top, with Oregon fifth; Michigan and South Carolina followed Missouri at the low end.