Inside $4.48 gasoline: $2.33 crude, 97¢ refining, 52¢ taxes

Of the $4.479 that a gallon of regular gasoline cost on average in May 2026, $2.33 went to pay for the crude oil in it. Federal and state taxes took about 52 cents. The refinery and everyone between the refinery gate and the nozzle shared the remaining $1.63. Those are the Energy Information Administration's own figures, and they are the latest month of its component breakdown as of October 20, 2026.

The pump price has moved since May. EIA's weekly survey put US regular at $4.331 a gallon in the week of October 12, 2026, published October 14, down 2.3 cents on the week and up $1.270 on the year. October shares are not yet published, so this piece uses the May split for the anatomy and the October price for the household arithmetic.

The four pieces, in EIA's own definitions

The shares are not stable. In January 2026 the same table shows a $2.809 gallon in which taxes were 18.4% and crude 50.6%. By May, with the price up $1.67, taxes had fallen to 11.5%, not because any tax was cut but because a cents-per-gallon tax does not grow when the rest does. March 2026 shows distribution and marketing at just 7.6%, the lag effect EIA describes: when wholesale jumps, the pump catches up over weeks, so the refining slice looks fat and the retail slice thin until it does.

The crude slice: 42 gallons and a $10 move

EIA's FAQ states that US refineries produce “about 19 to 20 gallons of motor gasoline” and “11 to 13 gallons of ultra-low sulfur distillate fuel oil” from “one 42-gallon barrel of crude oil”. The pump component method divides the barrel price by 42, so every dollar on a barrel is 2.38 cents on a gallon.

For how the oil price itself got to these levels, see the Brent piece and oil at $107. This article takes the barrel price as given and follows it to the pump.

The refining slice is a spread, not a fee

A refinery buys crude and sells products; its margin is the difference. EIA's explainer of June 2, 2011 defines the term: “Crack spreads are differences between wholesale petroleum product prices and crude oil prices.” The 3:2:1 benchmark it describes subtracts the price of three barrels of crude from the price of two barrels of gasoline plus one of distillate.

EIA's gasoline explainer adds that refining costs and profits “vary seasonally and by region in the United States”, partly because “different gasoline formulations are required to reduce air pollution in different parts of the country”, and that “gasoline demand usually increases in the summer, which generally results in higher prices”.

The tax slice is the only one written in cents

Because the tax is a fixed number of cents, its share falls when prices rise. At the January 2026 price of $2.809 it was 18.4% of the gallon; at $4.331 in the week of October 12 the same 51.67 cents is 11.9%. Local sales taxes, which EIA says “may have a large effect on the retail price of gasoline in some locations”, sit outside the national average entirely.

What it means for your money

Take a household that drives 12,000 miles a year at 25 miles per gallon. Both numbers are this article's assumptions, chosen to be easy to scale, not survey averages.

• The crude slice is the one that moves the bill. More than half of each gallon tracks a world price set in barrels. The CPI gasoline index in the September CPI piece is the same price seen from the household's side.
• The refining and retail slices absorb the timing. When wholesale moves, the pump follows with a lag, so the week-to-week pump change is rarely the barrel change divided by 42.
• The tax slice does not move with price. For a household in a state at the 33.27-cent average, about 52 cents of every gallon is the same whether gasoline is $2.81 or $4.33.

Scaling is linear: twice the miles, or half the mileage, doubles every figure above. The long view of the pump price is in the one-number gasoline piece.