It’s the number Southland motorists have been dreading.
On Thursday the average price for a gallon of regular gas in Los Angeles County topped $4 for the first time since July 22, 2014. Thursday’s price of $4.01 per gallon was up 18 cents from a week ago and up 87 cents from a month earlier, according to industry tracker GasBuddy.com.
San Bernardino County motorists also are feeling the pain, although the average price there has yet to hit $4 a gallon. On Thursday the county’s average was $3.93 a gallon, up 17 cents from a week ago and up 81 cents from a month earlier, according to GasBuddy.
The cheapest Southland price could be found at a Three Sisters Truck Stop in Fontana, which posted regular for $3.29 a gallon. On the other end of the spectrum, a Union 76 station in Los Angeles was selling regular for $4.99 a gallon and an Arco in Pomona priced it at $4.85 a gallon.
“I think people are frustrated and fed up,” said Allison Mac, GasBuddy’s petroleum analyst for the West Coast. “It’s the same old stuff … people just aren’t comfortable with the supply of gas we have in L.A.”
California’s production of gas have been whittled down by multiple refinery problems. And those “people” Mac referred to would be the traders who buy and sell gasoline on the wholesale market.
“We have crude prices that are relatively cheap right now at $59 a barrel,” Mac said. “In California they have ranged from $50 to $62 a barrel over the past couple weeks. But at the gas level it’s trading at $2.90 a gallon. If you do the quick math there are 42 gallons of gas to a barrel, and if you multiply that by $2.90 it’s $122 a barrel. So gas is selling for twice the price of crude oil. That’s very unusual.”
And by the time taxes, transportation costs, employee costs and overhead charges are figured in, the price jumps exponentially at the pump.
But Mac said relief is on the way.
“I don’t think it will stay in the $4-a-gallon range for long,” she said. “We’re bringing in gas from overseas so I think we’ll see some relief pretty soon. It will probably drop 10 to 20 cents by mid June.”
Production of California’s summer blend of gas fell 4.6 percent to 6.3 million barrels for the week ended May 8, according to the California Energy Commission. That was down 11.3 percent from a year ago.
L.A. County’s high prices are particularly disheartening when compared with the national average which was $2.70 per gallon on Thursday — $1.31 less.
“It really affects us,” said Claudia Leon, owner of the Andes Florist Place of Roses shop in Torrance. “It seems like it goes up every week. A month ago my husband decided to do some of our deliveries himself because when you use contractors it costs so much more.”
Leon said her business does about 65 deliveries a week to Santa Monica, Los Angeles and other communities.
“Right now our delivery fee is $10.99,” she said. “When gas goes up we have to charge more.”
California has been plagued by refinery problems.
The ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance remains mostly offline in the wake of an equipment failure that occurred in mid-February. The failure resulted in an explosion that injured four people and that facility is not expected to return to full operation until July at the earliest.
Tesoro’s Golden Eagle refinery in Martinez shut down on Feb. 1 when steelworkers at the facility joined in a nationwide strike. The facility was later restarted, but a processing unit was briefly shut down in mid April, although it has since resumed operation.
Chevron’s refinery in Richmond also did an unplanned shutdown in April for flaring, which occurs when too much pressure builds up due to over-pressurizing of equipment and flammable gas is released through pressure-relief valves.
A Phillips 66 refinery in Carson is in the midst of a planned maintenance operation that could last a few more weeks and another Chevron refinery in El Segundo is also offline for scheduled maintenance, according to Mac.
GasBuddy just did a survey of motorists to see whether higher gas prices will affect people’s summer travel plans. Fifty-eight percent of those polled nationwide said it wouldn’t affect their travel plans, while 24 percent said it was a concern.
In Los Angeles County the sentiment was evenly split — 47 percent said it would affect their plans and 47 percent said it wouldn’t.
