Better fill 'er up this weekend -- it'll cost you more than a week ago, but it could be still worse next week.
Gas is again selling for $4 a gallon or more at many Bay Area stations, with the statewide average of $3.99 up a dime from last week, according to AAA. Prices are poised to rise at least a few cents higher as Memorial Day and the start of the summer driving season approaches.
While that is far better than the state record $4.67, set Oct. 9, any jump usually rattles motorists, who worry that increases will continue.
"A very tight inventory situation has developed in California, and that's really behind much of the increase," said analyst Patrick DeHaan of GasBuddy.com. "As stations play catch-up to the rise in wholesale prices, prices in California could jump another 10 cents a gallon or more."
The upward spiral has hit the West Coast hard. Prices have jumped to $3.82 in Oregon and Washington this past week, up 20 and 16 cents respectively.
The California Energy Commission reported this week that supplies of non-California gasoline for use in Oregon and Washington is 15.3 percent lower than a year ago. California's supply of reformulated gas was down 10.1 percent from last year and gasoline production from California refineries was 5.8 percent lower than last year.
Also feeling the pain are states in the upper Midwest, where spring snowstorms and now flooding have contributed to increases there.
But experts are not expecting a huge spike. Worldwide demand is down, including in China, and supplies throughout the rest of the United States are ample. And the gas market has so far weathered the North Korea military threat and Israel's airstrikes in Syria -- the types of international crises that can often spook the energy market.
One reason is that the U.S. dollar is stronger than overseas currencies. Since oil is traded in dollars, a stronger dollar makes crude less appealing to speculators and helps keep prices lower.
"My reaction to gas prices rising is that summer is coming up and it seems typical for this time of year," said motorist Lisa Twardowski of Mountain View. "So, just accept it.
Lemme see, ANY excuse (besides greed) is a reason to ream the public at the pump a little more.
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
I can't say I care very much, personally, about such a tiny shift in price.
My major mileage is carpooling which nets > 52 passenger MPG; or too cheap to matter. Every time we have bought new cars in the past 30 years we have done so mindful of the fact that fuel prices might rise a great deal; as they did in the two 70s gas price 'shocks'.
Higher fuel costs would in the medium and long run by very beneficial financially and in terms of national sovereignty for all of us.
Cheap gas is a great way to guarantee that future generations of our children will have to die stupid wars in the middle east or be made amputees and brain-damaged.
If you want to pay higher taxes to pay support for even more disabled veterans for the next 50 years just keep whinging about cheap gas.
