Gas Drops To 77 Cents In Michigan

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 2:55PM EST · Published Jan 17, 6:31PM EST

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Gas Drops To 77 Cents In Michigan — © Thinkstock

Gas prices, just below $2 nationwide based on the average cost of a gallon of regular, have dropped to 77 cents at one station in Houghton Lake, Michigan, according to GasBuddy. The price is due in part to a price war. Two stations close by are selling regular for $.95 a gallon.

The 77 cent gas is available at Bacon and Bridge Market. The Marathon station at 9286 West Lake City Road and the Citgo station at 9469 West Lake City Road are selling 95 cent gas.

Iran sanctions have been lifted which will wash the world with more oil. By some estimates, the country can export 500,000 barrels a day. The current national average is $1.90. As crude collapses toward $25, gas prices are on their way down, again.

In several states, the average price for a gallon of regular gas has dropped below $1.70 and according to GasBuddy, prices in these states continue to drop. Among them are Oklahoma at $1.57, Missouri at $1.63, Alabama at $1.66, South Carolina at $1.66, Arkansas at $1.66, Kansas at $1.67, and Tennessee and Texas, and Missouri at $1.68.

The list of state with low gas prices show two things which affect prices other than the price of crude. The first is proximity to refineries. In the case of Texas and adjoining states, the refineries are the huge ones south of Houston on the Gulf of Mexico. These, in turn, are close to the deep water supply of the Gulf and the oil fields of Texas. South Carolina also has several large refineries.

On the other side of the coin, states far from refineries tend to have the highest gas prices in the nation. This include Hawaii at $2.65 and Alaska at $2.41.

The other primary factor in gas prices is state and federal taxes and levies. According to the American Petroleum Institute, the national average tax per gallon is $.48. However, the figure in South Carolina is $.352, in Oklahoma $.354, in Missouri $.357, and $.384 in Texas. There have been a number of calls to raise gas taxes as a means to help state governments pay for road repairs which they would otherwise struggle to do because of budget restraints. As this point, there are no serious threats to a change in theses state taxes, but that could change if gas prices continue to fall

There is no major reason to believe gas prices will not continue to press down, and in some cases as dropped below $1 a gallon

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.