From the Sacramento Bee:
Here we go again.
California motorists, just one month removed from absorbing a steep gasoline price spike blamed on a refinery fire in Richmond, are in for another big hit, energy analysts said Wednesday.
National gas price tracker GasBuddy.com predicted spikes ranging from 10 to 30 cents a gallon this week at gas pumps throughout the state.
Patrick DeHaan,
senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy, said the statewide average price
of gas reached a 2012 high of $4.35 a gallon in mid-March, "and we
could blow that out of the water by this weekend in California."
Some California locales could see $4.40 a gallon by the weekend, DeHaan said.
An Aug. 6 fire in a unit of a key Chevron refinery – with a capacity of 245,000 barrels a day – in Richmond prompted a 25.8-cent spike in the average price of Sacramento-area gas within just a few days, and prices have hardly moved since then, hovering around the $4.07-$4.10 range.
This time, analysts pointed to multiple refinery issues, curbing gas supplies that analysts said were already tight following the Richmond fire.
A Monday power outage at ExxonMobil's 150,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Torrance disrupted its output. Dow Jones said the company is now "normalizing" production...
Analysts noted that California-specific regulations for producing gasoline make the state vulnerable to price spikes when supplies go down. California cannot simply borrow millions of barrels of gasoline from neighboring states on short notice.
Also ironic: This is typically the time of year when gas prices decline, with the end of the summer driving season and a refinery switchover to producing less-expensive winter-blend gasoline.
"(California) is moving in the wrong direction. This is like springtime," DeHaan said, adding that California prices are at an all-time high for this time of year.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/10/04/4879836/analysts-gas-prices-likely-to.html
Because of the EPA, NIMBY and other factors, we have not have a new refinery built int he U.S. for many years. Because of this, the refineries are breaking and when they do, gas prices rise.
California residents only have one person to blame and that is themselves. They vote in all these liberals who really don't give a crap about cars and gas prices
Sucks to be living in California right now and paying these huge gas prices.
MKE: City of Death From Speeding
1 hour ago
Here's what bugs me: something goes kerflugy at a refinery, and there is an INSTANT hike in prices. . .to gasoline that has already been refined, produced, delivered, and sits in a tank in the ground. The gas in that tank suddenly costs more because they CAN, not because it needs to. Pisses me off.
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