Premium Gas Tops $4.80 in California — No Link to Falling Oil

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Most of the media reports about gas prices in California cover the fact that gas prices in some parts of the state have moved above $5. But, for drivers who use premium, the prices is already near that level throughout the state. The AAA Fuel Gauge showed the average price for a gallon of premium in California is now $4.80.

The price spikes in California have been blame on refinery capacity. But, that is not the whole of it. Much of the oil California uses is transported  south from Alaska–an expensive proposition.

Gas prices for a gallon of regular on average around the U.S. reached $3.806, up from $3.783 a week ago. Regular has topped $4 in seven states, include several of the most populous–New York and California among them.

What many Americans consider extraordinary and inexplicable is that the price of WTI crude has dropped quickly below $90–a sign of the lack of connection between crude and gas. At least in the short term, the global economic slowdown and lack of military confrontation with Iran have pushed the price of oil down. Refinery bottle necks and shortages of gas inventory in some regions of America have forced it higher.

Now. Americans have to wait, for who knows how long, for oil prices to trigger a drop in gas.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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