Gas Prices in 2020

The 2020 average was $2.17, 43.6¢ below 2019 and 17.8% lower after inflation. The EIA reported it was the lowest annual average since 2016. The year’s high came in its first week, $2.58 on January 6, before the pandemic reached the United States.

Responses to COVID-19 in March cut driving and gasoline demand across the country. The national average fell 12.8¢ in the week of March 23, the year’s largest weekly decline, and kept falling to $1.77 in the week of April 27, the year’s low. A week earlier, on April 20, the May futures contract for WTI crude oil settled below zero for the first time as storage filled. The New York Harbor wholesale price fell to 43¢ a gallon during the spring. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the recession to February through April 2020.

Prices recovered partly as travel resumed. The largest weekly increase, 8.2¢, came in the week of May 25, and the monthly average held near $2.18 from July through December. The year ended at $2.24, 33.5¢ below its first week.

Ten years after 2010, the annual average was 22.1% lower in current dollars, at $2.17, and 34.3% lower after inflation. Measured against 2015 it was down 10.7%, or 18.3% in real terms. The spring low, $1.77 on April 27, 2020, was the cheapest week since 2016. Even the first week of January, the year’s highest at $2.58, was below the 2019 annual average of $2.60.

After adjusting for inflation, the 2020 average of $2.70 in 2025 dollars was lower than that of 2000, $2.78, the first year of the weekly regular-grade series. That puts 2020 41st of the complete years from 1970 through 2025 on the inflation-adjusted measure, and 20th by the unadjusted price.

EIA’s state estimates, which average all grades, show Texas with the lowest price in 2020, $1.85, ahead of Alabama at $1.87; Georgia, lowest the year before, was 6th. Hawaii and Alaska were at the top, at $3.19 and $3.19, and California third at $2.98, 81.8¢ above an all-grades U.S. average of $2.16.

Hawaii's 2020 average of $3.19 and Texas's $1.85 mark the ends of the state range, which spans $1.34 from highest-priced to lowest-priced state. These are EIA State Energy Data System annual averages for all grades. On that basis, 22 of 51 states, D.C. included, stood above the U.S. figure in 2020.

The national average moved through 2019, 2020 and 2021 at $2.60, $2.17 and $3.01. From 2019 to 2020 it fell 16.7% at the pump. From 2020 to 2021 it rose 38.7% at the pump, and the same 2020 to 2021 move in constant 2025 dollars was a rise of 32.5%. Constant-dollar figures are in 2025 dollars (CPI-U).

EIA recorded 52 weeks of data for 2020. The highest weekly price, $2.58, and the lowest, $1.77, are 80.5¢ apart. The 2020 national figure of $2.17 is the mean of those weekly U.S. regular-grade retail prices, the basis used from 2000 onward. That $2.17 is stated at the pump, meaning not adjusted for inflation, while $2.70 is the same average in constant 2025 dollars.

Counted from the cheapest in constant 2025 dollars, 2020 is 16th-lowest of 56 complete years between 1970 and 2025, and at the pump it is 20th-highest.