Gas station prices vary due to location, supply costs, competition, taxes, and brand policies affecting how fuel is priced.
If you’ve ever been on a road trip, you’ll find that when you stop for gas, the prices are generally different at various stops. That’s no error. There are a lot of processes that go on behind the scenes before you can pump out gas from a nozzle. Gasoline prices account for these processes and vary due to the different factors peculiar to each filling station.
Think of gasoline pricing as a cocktail. In this cocktail, crude oil is the vodka, and every other factor is the mixer. These include refining, distribution, taxes, and branding. So, the price of crude oil is responsible for over half of the pump price, as without it, everything else falls flat. The extra costs are the refining processes that turn crude oil into motor-ready gas.
