Will California gas prices set records this weekend?
Experts predict that California's drivers will briefly see prices higher than the current all-time record of $4.61. When will gas prices go down?
Traffic moves on Lincoln Boulevard, near a sign posted with gasoline prices at a Mobil gas station in Santa Monica, California October 4, 2012. Pump prices in California soared this week as key Golden State refineries were disrupted at a time of low inventories, putting prices on track to break a record set in the summer of 2008.
Jonathan Alcorn/Rueters
Brace yourself, Californians. Gas prices are going up. Again.
Skip to next paragraph
The website focuses on the auto industry’s future, the evolution of cars beyond fossil fuels, and the green movement's relevance to car shoppers today. For more stories on green cars, click here.
Recent posts
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
With the Golden State already paying some of the highest gas prices in the nation, California drivers will find it's going to get more costly than ever to fill their tanks.
According to Reuters, oil analyst Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for Oil Price Information Service, expects the state's drivers will briefly see prices higher than the current all-time record of $4.61 a gallon.
Yesterday, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the state was $4.31.
The soaring gas prices are due to a regrettable combination of three events.
First, state refineries have lowered production as they get ready to make the switch to "winter blend" gasoline.
Second, a power outage at a Torrance refinery combined with a partial shutdown at a Richmond refinery to cut production severely.
And third, a crude-oil pipeline to San Francisco Bay Area refineries from the state's Central Valley has been shut for several weeks due to high organic chloride levels in the crude.
Kloza doesn't expect the record gas-price levels to last for months, but only for weeks, perhaps even a few days.
But it may offer little comfort to Californians that their gasoline costs are still far lower than in other parts of the world.
In the U.K., for example, this week's average price of£1.3883 per liter translates to $8.50 per gallon--higher even than the $8-per-gallon prices seen in London earlier this year.
Over the Labor Day weekend, U.S. gas prices hit an average of $3.80 per gallon.
Prices in California have been above $4 a gallon for many months now.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best auto bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link in the blog description box above.
Become part of the Monitor community