California Fuel Fraud? $4.60 in next week.

[89ARIES]

They shutdown our plants, reduce fuel availability 1/3rd, lie through their teeth about fuel prices dropping, as they only dropped 5 cents in two months, and now they are going
to jack up our prices 20 cents as A MINIMUM! This is gas fraud at its best in my opinion. $5 dollars, here we come! Going to break the 2008 fuel record. We have NEVER been looking
at $5 dollar fuel before. Only $70 at that rate to fill a 14 gallon tank. Its costs $700 to fly back east now. FRAUD, FRAUD, FRAUD:

Better fill up tonight.

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/l ... 1026.story

Refinery closures end streak of gas price declines in California
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A nozzle pumps fuel into the gas tank of a car at a Chevron Corp. gasoline station in San Francisco. Refinery maintenance has reduced gasoline supplies in California, resulting in rising prices. (David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / April 6, 2012)

By Ronald D. White

May 7, 2012, 8:58 a.m.
California's streak of seven straight weeks of gasoline price declines has ended, victimized by widespread refinery maintenance shutdowns that have reduced fuel supplies by nearly a third compared with a year ago, according to state statistics.

Four of the 12 refineries in California that produce the state's expensive blend of gasoline have been in temporary shutdown, mostly for maintenance, according to state petroleum statistics.

As of April 27, that situation had left the state with about 4.46 million gallons of gasoline, compared with about 6.61 million gallons a year earlier, according to the California Energy Commission's Fuels Watch Report. In California, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $4.21 a gallon, up 0.1 cents overnight and up 4.7 cents since last week, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report.

Maintenance has affected, for example, Tesoro Corp.'s 166,000 barrel-a-day Golden Eagle refinery in Martinez, ConocoPhillips' 139,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Wilmington, and Shell Oil Co.'s 156,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Martinez.

"Some hot spots may burn motorists before they see any more sizable relief in prices," said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com. "When I mention hot spots, I'm thinking of the West Coast, where supply has dropped considerably, causing tightness and higher prices."

DeHaan said the rest of the U.S. "should see short-term relief continue ahead of Memorial Day."

The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline reached $3.777 a gallon, down 0.6 cents overnight and off 3.9 cents since last week, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report.

In other energy news, crude oil prices were dropping to their lowest prices of the year. Oil futures were down $1.90 to $96.59 a barrel during trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after falling as low as $95.34, the lowest since late December.

The crude used to price U.S. oil imports, known as Brent North Sea, was also down $1.05 $112.13 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe Exchange. California gasoline prices are more affected by the Brent price and by Alaskan North Slope crude, which was running at about $112 a barrel.