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Comment by phainopepla2 | Hacker News Reader

It's crazy to me that gas in Hawaii, 3k miles out into the Pacific, is cheaper than most of California.

It is not crazy if you know that gas prices include taxes that can greatly vary by jurisdiction. The price at the pump may have little to do with cost of procuring it.

California also has its own special gas that no one else uses, and cannot produce or refine it domestically to meet its own demand.

Every state has their own gas. Well, you might find the same gas in, say, North Dakota and Minnesota or something, but those are right next to each other and have very similar environment situations. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if Minneapolis, and western Minnesota had different rules for environmental reasons.

I think you are wrong about this. My belief is that that most states use "conventional" gasoline, a substantial subset require the same "reformulated" gasoline, and a handful only allow the sale of "boutique" formulations in all or some of their counties.

Here's a list of the states that require reformulated: https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/reformulated-gasoline

And here's a shorter list of those with areas requiring boutique formulations: https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/state-fuels

My belief is that all the rest only require the basic federal standard, which results in a map like this with a lot of states in gray: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67464

But if I'm wrong, I'd love to be corrected. What do you have for sources that support your assertion that "every state has their own gas"?

Most (70%) gasoline sold in MN comes from the (Koch) Pine Bend Refinery in Rosemount/Inver Grove Heights. The remainder comes from the (Husky) Superior Refinery in Superior, WI (NE and Northern MN) and the (Marathon) Mandan Refinery in Mandan, ND (NW and Northern MN)

There’s also a Marathon Refinery in St Paul Park, unsure what they make but it runs on a skeleton crew. The Pine Bend Refinery has a pipeline that runs also to MSP Airport to deliver Jet A (kerosene).

Sadly 2 parts of Arizona use CA gas.

This means a couple of things: those places don't have 93, and the mileage you get out of a gallon is less.

I wish the government would ban 2 stroke engines (like leaf-blowers), which would have a much larger effect on air quality, vs using CA's oxygenated gas.

Taxes.

Not only taxes, but a specific California blend CARBOB, with 17% of the refineries that made it shutting down [1], causing a big reversal in policy perspectives to pro oil to slow down refineries from leaving [2], and the need to import, by sea, 20% from participating refineries in Asia [3] and 40% from Bahamas [4].

California being on the path to high prices this year was all over the news last year [5], but nobody seems to remember that, instead blaming it all on the Iran conflict.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65704

[2] https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/08/oil-compromise-calif...

[3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/california-high...

[4] https://www.americanenergyalliance.org/2026/02/newsom-import...

[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2025/12/07/newsom...

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