Why is Oregon gas expensive? Five factors we can VERIFY

PORTLAND, Ore. — More Oregonians would likely agree: Oregon gasoline is expensive. It trends up and down, just like everywhere else, but the prices at Oregon pumps always seems to be a bit higher than in most other states at any given time — and the state’s closest neighbors often find themselves in the same boat. 

“The West Coast region is always in the top 10,” said Marie Dodds with AAA. “We’ve got seven states in our region, and it’s very common for those states to be first through seventh.”

Some of KGW’s previous reporting on gas prices has delved a bit into the reasons for this unfortunate distinction, such as the long distance between the West Coast and the Gulf Coast, the U.S.’s oil production hotbed. But that explanation didn’t sit well with viewer John Larson, who recently emailed KGW to point out that Oregon and Washington import much of their crude oil from geographically closer sources. Here’s what he had to say:

Oregon and Washington gas prices average around a dollar more a gallon than the national average. The crude oil for Oregon and Washington has come mainly from Alaska since the 1970s and is refined locally. So why aren’t the gas prices in Oregon and Washington at the national average or lower?

We set out to VERIFY a more detailed explanation for the discrepancy Larson highlighted, looking not so much at what makes the prices go up and down, but why Oregon’s prices in particular always seem to be comparatively high. We landed on five major factors that tend to make Oregon gas extra pricey.

Oregon, Washington and Hawaii are not crude oil producers — according to a 2022 ranking from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, each of those states produced zero barrels the year before. Idaho, Nevada and Arizona are also lightweights, producing fewer than 250 barrels combined. And that’s not a policy choice — there simply aren’t any big oil deposits beneath those states, as shown in a map from a 2020 Oregon Department of Energy Report.

But the same doesn’t go for the rest of the western and pacific states. That same EIA ranking put Alaska in fourth place for 2021, accounting for 3.9% of U.S. production, and California wasn’t too far behind, producing about 135,000 barrels to Alaska’s 160,000. The Canadian oil production powerhouse of Alberta is also at least sort of close by.

But in relative terms, the West Coast represents a fairly small slice of U.S. oil production. The top three producers — Texas, New Mexico and North Dakota — collectively churn out nearly two thirds of the country’s crude oil, with North Dakota alone producing more than all the West Coast states combined in 2021, according to the EIA ranking. Offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico accounts for about another 15%.

Still, the West Coast collectively produces enough oil to get by at least partially on its own, which gets back to Larson’s point. A breakdown from the Oregon Department of Energy report showed that imports from Alberta and Alaska account for a large majority of the crude oil that ultimately becomes gasoline sold in Oregon, with North Dakota emerging as another prominent source in the past decade.

Related: Hundreds protest Dakota Access Pipeline in Portland on Thanksgiving

Here’s where we get into the issue of Oregon’s high gas prices. The state’s lack of crude oil production means all of its gas needs to be imported, and that’s a much more expensive endeavor than in other states that are geographically closer to the Gulf Coast. 

The Rocky Mountains create a natural barrier that makes piping oil more difficult — a map of major liquid pipelines from the American Petroleum Institute shows a dense network of pipelines spiderwebbed across the South and Midwest to cheaply distribute oil and gas…