Why Gas Prices Are Spiking

Gas is never cheap in California. But if you’ve filled up your tank in recent days, you may have found yourself wincing more than usual.

That’s because, for the first time since July 2015, the average price for a gallon of gas in the Golden State pushed past $4, Dan McTeague, a senior petroleum analyst with the site GasBuddy, told me on Monday afternoon.

“That’s a psychological benchmark for a lot of people,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming.”

You may already know that the primary reason gas tends to be more expensive in California is the state’s stringent gasoline standards, which require a cleaner fuel blend that only a few refineries outside the state can produce.

So when work is stopped at any of the 10 major refineries within California, it can make a significant dent in the supply of gas, which causes prices to rise.

And that, McTeague said, is exactly what’s been happening.

According to a report by the Oil Price Information Service, six of those 10 major refineries have had work disruptions — like a fire at a Phillips 66 refinery in Carson on March 15 — or planned maintenance that has taken them offline.

McTeague said that those, coupled with a problem at an Air Products hydrogen plant, added up to an abnormal run.

“You might have one, you might have two,” he said of unplanned disruptions. “You don’t have five or six.”

Plus, he said, the timing is just bad: Refineries are switching to summer gas blend production, which can take facilities temporarily offline.

McTeague said prices were down over the last couple of days. But he cautioned that “there’s still momentum in the price” and that information lags by about a week.

He predicted the average price per gallon would “crest” at about $4.15 soon, before dropping back to the $3.80 range.

But McTeague noted that big driving weekends — Easter and Memorial Day — are coming up. And drivers may be taking to the roads while supplies are still diminished.

Either way, he said, “I think we’re looking at a volatile summer.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.