Quote:
Originally Posted by KeepItGreasey
You would have to judge all the states differently as well. We have a BUTTLOAD of refineries in Los Angeles, and some of the highest prices? We don't even get a break because it pretty much costs nothing to transport gasoline to local stations... compared to supplying a state like Wyoming with gasoline.
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You have to put it in perspective as well. The gasoline that refinery is making might not even be legal to sell in California. The reason for this is that the CARB has mandated the use of a reformulated gasoline that exceeds the federal requirements for clean gasoline formulations. The gas that is sold in say Wyoming is actually illegal to sell in California. So because of this there are far fewer refineries making CARB gas then federal gas, which results in higher baseline prices and prices that are far more susceptible to market volatility.
And now just for fun, even if they were making CARB gas, that refinery cannot ship gas to the gas station accross the street. It has to put it in the pipeline and pipe it to a transfer station. At the transfer station it is pumped into trucks for local delivery. The reason for this is two fold. The first is that all of the gasoline that leaves a refinery is actually a stock blend that meets the specific formulation requirements (CARB or federal) (for a given formulation the gas that leaves from the valero and chevron refineries is for all intensive purposes identical). All of the special additives (think V-Power, Techron, etc.) that all of the premium gasoline blends market are actually added to the gas at the transfer station when the gasoline is actually pumped into trucks for local delivery. The second is various AQMD requirements in place that govern bulk transfer of fuel. Basically most refineries (for southern California at least) operate in an area that does not allow them to bulk transfer fuel into a truck for local delivery because they are not permitted for it (The logic driving this is the same idiotic logic that is behind the removal of the retention clips on the fuel nozzles at all of the gas stations).
So as dumb as it sounds it basically costs the same to supply gasoline to a gas station right across the street as it does to a station in Wyoming (actually it probably costs less to deliver to Wyoming because the local transport operators I am sure have far less costs involved then someone running a fuel rig in California).
Any way you slice it though it sucks...