San Luis Obispo County has the second highest gas prices in the nation with the average cost for a gallon of regular at $3.88, according to an AAA report.
San Francisco has the highest gas prices in the country at $3.89 a gallon and Santa Barbara County is third at $3.87.
The sharp increases in gas prices are due to surging crude oil prices primarily because of unrest in oil producing areas in the Middle East.
Prices are gonna get a helluva lot higher, and soon.
We’re finding out just how fragile things are in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, there at the heart of things oily. I give them three weeks before it starts to blow up. And even Iran might get The Sickness. Plan on a staycation this summer and start thinking about that garden because it’s not altogether certain that we’ll keep up the conveyer belt of Little Debbie Snack Cakes and other staples of the American table into the supermarkets when diesel fuel hit $10 a gallon and the truckers stay home to watch the Kardashian girls. I’m already getting hungry.
History shows that oil nations which undergo political upheaval invariably end up producing far less oil, permanently, no matter whether the political outcome is better or worse than before. So, notwithstanding the media fantasy to the effect that America’s founding fathers have been reincarnated in places like Egypt the past month, it is unlikely that there would be anything but an extreme downside effect on the world’s oil supply, even if the successor to Hosni Mubarak turned up in a powdered wig and waistcoat holding the Bill of Rights translated into Arabic in his beneficent hand.
Yet all this has hardly made an impression on a US public preoccupied with comings and goings of Charlie Sheen. Think of it: Charlie Sheen in the White House. With a pound of pharmaceutical-grade blow. More intellect in one seat than since the night Thomas Jefferson dined with his water spaniel, Hercules.
And we Baby Boomers sit trance like in stunned silence as matters spin crazy on us. We were certain of our superiority over the folly of past generations and expected nothing worse than a sequence of diminishing golf scores and blander meals as our horizons moved past assisted living to the final meet-up with God. Now, it turns out, we get to watch our grandchildren fight over the table scraps of the American Dream – such as it was: Chevies, burgers, reality TV, and all the mortgage obligations you could cram in the kitchen drawer.
Shoot, gas this morning gas was $3.93 a gallon for regular in Morro Bay. My girlfriend put $20 in and it was 5.077 gallons.
On Saturday regular gas was $4.09 a gallon at Cayucos’ one and only gas station.
Maybe it’s time we took oil off the commodities markets to get rid of the speculators who get rich by artificially inflating the price of crude but don’t drill a single well or refine a single barrel, or put oil companies in the category of a regulated utility. Allow them a 15% profit like they do PG&E and SoCal Edison but no more.
I hate to endorse further government regulation but oil, energy in general, is too much of a necessity for our civilization right now to be undergoing these price spikes every couple of months just because some despot in Africa or the Middle East is under attack from his own people.
How much pure profit was just created in this preceding mo. price rise of 35 cents/gal. multiplied U.S. consumption in gallons for the last 30 days. Anybody?
That’s pure profit absorbed into investors pockets in return for no tangible contribution to anything. And was obtainable simply by a media created threat of some future sarcity. Just like the last time, and the time before that and…. What a scam, it’s all theatrics. Thanks Wall St./Fed bankers, glad we could be a part of your ingenious scam.
High fuel prices @ this point kills any recovery we were or weren’t in.
Follow the money, follow the money
I followed the moeny, and every time I wound up at the feet of someone who I could not physically get to, who wouldn’t even talk to me, and who employed vast numbers of goons in uniforms with more guns than I… what is a person to do? lol
….it’s 375 million gal. per day X 35 cents per gallon X 30 days = $ 4 billion bucks heading off to all my fave people, Saudi family, dictators and Wall Streeters.
We are getting so screwed by the oil companies and it has little to do with supply and demand. Consider this:
Gas is really, really high here because of our geographic location-alot of people have to fill up here. Think about it. The Central Coast is a full tank of gas from north, south and east.
When people travel from Norther Cal to southern cal-they have to fill up here. When they travel from southern cal to northern cal-they have to fill up here. If their weekend destination is the central coast from northern, southern cal, fresno or bakersfield-they have to fill up here.
So, the oil companies knows the central coast is a “fill up” location based on where travelers have to fill up. There is more gas pumped here-so this happens to be the place the oil companies choose to jack the prices.
We are screwed. Even if half the cars were electric-the oil companies will make their billions. They will jack the prices up to $10 a gallon. The ink is dried on their contracts. They are going to charge us whatever they need to make their billions.
I think you’ve been huffn a little hydrocarbon. You want to complain about pennies while futures speculators are makin dollars! It aint where you live, it’s what you are willing to pay.
THERE IS A FRIGGIN REFINERY IN SANTA MARIA YOU FOOL!!!!!!
That;s right! if the Refinery that is locoated IN YOUR GHODDAMN NEIGBORHOOD could sell refined fuel that IS PUMPED IN YOUR GHODAMMED NEIGHBORHOOD without the pressure of international future speculators you’d have all the fuel you need.
Please enlighten me to the location of this “Refinery” you speak of.
Traders should be required to TAKE DELIVERY of commodities.. that would solve the speculation problem real quick.
Commodities trading is just another table at the wall street casino which only serves to artificially boost the cost of goods and increase the volatility in the price.
Excuse me, who has the highest prices??
It’s $4.09/gal in Eureka! $4.07 at the cheap pump..
Prices have been rising .10 each week.
Reporter Karen Velie, (805) 234-1703
Reporter Ben Di Gugliemo
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