Gas Prices in 2019

Gasoline averaged $2.60 in 2019, 11.5¢ less than in 2018 and 5.9% lower after inflation. The year started low, at $2.24 in the week of January 7, the year’s low, carried over from the crude oil decline at the end of 2018.

From there the spring pattern was strong. The monthly average rose from $2.25 in January to $2.86 in May, and the high, $2.90, came in the week of May 6. Prices eased through summer; the largest weekly decline, 7.5¢, came in the week of June 10.

On September 14, an attack damaged Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq oil processing facility, which the EIA describes as the world’s largest, with capacity of about 7 million barrels a day. On September 16, Brent and WTI crude had their largest one-day price increase in a decade. The effect on the pump was modest and brief: the national average rose 10.2¢ in the week of September 23, the year’s largest weekly increase, and fell back as Saudi output was restored within weeks. The year ended at $2.57, about 33¢ above its first week.

Relative to 2014, the 2019 average was 22.5% lower in current dollars and 28.2% lower after inflation. The ten-year comparison with 2009, a recession year, points the other way in current dollars, with 2019 10.7% higher. In real terms it was still 7.1% below 2009. Measured from 2000, the first year of weekly prices, the inflation-adjusted average of $3.28 was 18.2% higher.

The highest week of 2019, $2.90 on May 6, 2019, fell short of the annual average of every year from 2011 through 2014, the lowest of which was 2014 at $3.36. On the long-run table, 2019 sits 14th of the complete years since 1970 by unadjusted price, one place below 2018, and 28th once inflation is taken out.

In EIA’s all-grades estimates by state, Georgia and Alabama again had the two lowest averages, $2.26 and $2.28. The highest were in Hawaii and Alaska, at $3.75 and $3.75. Outside those two, California was the most expensive, at $3.50, or 90.3¢ above the U.S. all-grades figure of $2.60.

The U.S. average in 2018 was $2.72, and 2019 came in at $2.60 after a decrease of 4.2% at the pump. From 2019 to 2020 the average fell 16.7% at the pump, to $2.17 in 2020. In constant 2025 dollars, the 2018 to 2019 change was a decrease of 5.9%, and the 2019 to 2020 change was a decrease of 17.8%.

The ten-year view starts from 2009, when the average was $2.35 at the pump. In constant 2025 dollars, the 2019 average fell 7.1% from 2009. The highest U.S. annual average in constant 2025 dollars from 1970 to 2025 was $5.08, in 2012, against $3.28 for 2019.

Within 2019, the EIA recorded 52 weeks of data. The gap between the weekly high of $2.90 and the weekly low of $2.24 was 66.0¢.

By state in 2019, Georgia had the lowest average at $2.26 and Hawaii had the highest at $3.75, a difference of $1.49. In the EIA all-grades figures, 21 of 51 states, counting D.C., had a 2019 average above the U.S. average.