pump2(CSi, GasBuddy.com) Hard to believe, but the national average price of gas was more than $1 per gal. higher at the start of 2014 ($3.29) than it was on the last day of the year. On Jan. 1, 2014, WTI crude oil was trading at $98 per barrel and gas below $3 was found in just a handful of states.

When GasBuddy issued our 2014 Fuel Price Outlook we said the year “will find more consistent downward pressure on U.S. gas prices than any year since the Great Recession (2008).” Of course, nobody anticipated that crude oil prices would plunge so far for so long and that 2014 gas prices would fall to 2009 levels.

Spring-to-Summer Ascent

Like clockwork the first quarter brought rising fuel prices associated with the annual transition from ‘winter blend’ gas to the lower Reid Vapor Pressure (cleaner-burning) gasoline mandated by the EPA. By the end of March the national average stood at $3.53 per gal., and the price at the pump continued to move higher as gasoline supply declined and ethanol prices weighed on gasoline prices. Ethanol prices through March stood well higher than wholesale gasoline prices, making the required blending of ethanol even more expensive.

By late April prices in Hawaii reached $4.34/gal.; California was at $4.21/gal.; Illinois averaged $3.90/gal., Connecticut was at $3.85 and New York was just a penny behind at $3.84/gal.

Motorists in the Great Lakes had their share of headaches too due to a refinery glitch at BP’s Whiting, IN refinery, and a glitch at ExxonMobil’s Joliet refinery.