Today’s fuel price musings - Prices starting to inch down, though Midwest remains high

January 13th, 2009 at 05:39pm Thomas V. Bona

Prices in Rockford proper have dropped a little to the $1.96 range, but we still feel the pressure of higher wholesale prices out of the Chicago market. Check out this gas price temperature map and see - the West Coast leads the nation, but the Midwest is also quite above average. It ain’t just Rockford, folks.

A lot of it is taxes - at last count by the American Petroleum Institute, Illinois had the third highest gas taxes in the country and was on average 16 cents higher than the national average (hey, that accounts for more than the difference with the national average!) Also, we’re farther away from most refineries on the Gulf Coast (it’s no coincidence the West Coast hasĀ  the highest fuel prices, then the Midwest). And you’ll see northern Illinois, which is generally the most expensive and most taxes part of the state as well as the farthest from the Gulf, has the highest prices consistently.

Also, I have a correction. Somewhere along the line I started reporting that there are 250 metro areas in the U.S. tracked by AAA’s fuelgaugereport.com. It’s actually almost 280, and somewhere on this blog I transposed that number … I apologize. We’re still in the upper reaches of the nation’s prices, though we might drop a little when things are updated tomorrow.

Here are the prices (courtesy of AAA’s fuelgaugereport.com):

Gasoline: Rockford dropped a fraction of a cent to $1.93 a gallon. We have the third-highest gas prices in the state, behind Chicago and Quad Cities. We’re the 52nd-highest of the nation’s 280 metro areas. The Illinois average dropped a fraction of a cent to $1.93. The national average remained at $1.79. Illinois is tied with the sixth-highest gas prices in the nation, including the District of Columbia. Alaska and Hawaii are joined by California in averaging more than $2 a gallon.

Diesel: Rockford rose six cents to $2.40 a gallon. We have the sixth-highest diesel prices in the state. The state average increased a cent to $2.55. The national average rose a fraction of a cent to $2.43. Illinois has the 14th-highest diesel prices in the country. Only Alaska and Hawaii remain above $3 a gallon.

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