Gas Price Still Above $3 in California

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 30, 7:20AM EDT · Published Mar 29, 7:57AM EDT

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California suffers from a perfect storm of conditions that keep gasoline prices high. While most states have prices of an average gallon of regular below $2.50, California’s is $3.21. In some of its cities, the figure is much higher.

Nationwide, according to GasBuddy, the price has been fairly steady for a month, just above $2.42. That is well below $3.51 a year ago, but above prices since earlier in the year. As crude has jumped up in the past two months, so have gas prices. But the trend of oil prices has started down, and with this the promise that, in some states, gas prices will fall below $2. The price is already down to $2.09 in South Carolina.

Among the primary causes of the high price in the largest state in the nation by population is high “motor fuel taxes,” as the American Petroleum Institute calls them. The figure is $0.6379 in California. These taxes are, by contrast, $0.297 in oil-rich Alaska and $0.3515 in South Carolina. And South Carolina has a large number of refineries, which is another reason its average gas price is so low.

California drivers have had poor luck as two large refineries have closed. The first is Tesoro refinery in Martinez, Calif., which has been shut down due to a strike by the United Steel Workers. The second is the Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) refinery in Torrance, which was closed due to a fire.

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California has some cities where prices are well above $3, and for the most part these are the state’s largest cities. The price is $3.36 in San Francisco, $3.26 in Los Angeles and $3.24 in San Diego.

Even if the price of oil drops back toward $40 a barrel, California’s gas price will remain the highest in the country. Too many other factors are against it.

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.