Pennsylvania has the highest gas prices east of the Rockies, AAA says
Gas prices remain high nationally, even though demand is down. Blame high crude prices. Delaware's prices are among the nation's lowest.
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Pennsylvania’s average price for a gallon of regular gas on Tuesday — $3.518 — was the highest of any state east of the Rocky Mountains, according to AAA.
New Jersey’s price per gallon, $3.378, while 14 cents cheaper, was still higher than the national average, $3.314.
Delaware’s, at $3.22, was among the lowest in the nation, and the best deals in the Philadelphia region evidently were in New Castle County, where the average per-gallon cost was 3.246, followed closely by Camden County at $3.226.
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Delaware’s price was down a penny over last week, but 75 cents higher than at the same time last year. Pennsylvania’s and New Jersey’s, while quite similar to what they were last week, still were more than 80 cents higher than at this time in 2021, AAA said.
That’s in keeping with the national trend in which prices have remained elevated even as demand has dropped, the automobile group said. The national average was up a penny over last week.
Ordinarily, gas gets cheaper when demand drops. However AAA noted that these are not ordinary times.
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The decline in demand is likely related to winter weather and the vigor of the omicron variant. However, crude-oil prices are more than $80 a barrel, about a 25% jump in the last few weeks, “and the primary reason is global economic optimism, whether well-founded or not, that the worst of COVID may soon be behind us,” an AAA spokesman said in a news release posted Tuesday
It could be worse — and it is in California, where it was $4.65 on Tuesday, the highest in the nation.