The war in Iran and its effect on the key shipping lane for so much oil is fueling the overall jump at the gas pump nationwide.<\/p>\n
The average price of gas is now above $4 nationwide, but the average California gas price is hovering just below $6, with several places charging even more.<\/p>\n
With many people asking why California pays so much more than the national average, NBC Bay Area asked a renowned expert in the oil and gas industry about the roughly $2 difference per gallon.<\/p>\n
Dr. Severin Borenstein, faculty director of UC Berkeley\u2019s Energy Institute at Haas, said California\u2019s high gas taxes, environmental fees and unique blend account for about half of the difference. But even he said he can’t quite explain the rest.<\/p>\n
“The difference is what I call the mystery gasoline surcharge,” he said.<\/p>\n
Borenstein said before 2015, when a refinery in Torrance closed, California\u2019s gas prices were largely in line with the national average, with another 90 cents to $1 tacked on for California’s gas taxes and environmental costs.<\/p>\n
But with prices now $2 above the average, the math makes no sense, even to the experts.<\/p>\n
“Since 2015, California’s additional payments for gasoline, above what\u2019s justified by taxes and environmental costs, amounts to over $60 billion,” Borenstein said.<\/p>\n
Borenstein said limited refining capacity and the state\u2019s specially-mixed, cleaner-burning fuel account for about one-third of that extra dollar.<\/p>\n
“Most of the differential actually occurs downstream, somewhere in the distribution, marketing and retailing of the gasoline,” Borenstein said.<\/p>\n
The state has empaneled a new California Energy Commission division to investigate the so-called “mystery surcharge.”<\/p>\n
California also lost a large oil refinery last year near Los Angeles and the Valero refinery in Benecia is set to close this month. Borenstein said the loss of those refineries and uncertainty about the ability to get additional oil imports could drive prices up even higher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The war in Iran and its effect on the key shipping lane for so much oil is fueling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,23526],"class_list":{"0":"post-249352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-oil-gas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}