West Coast Gas Prices Worst in Nation

W A S H I N G T O N, April 25 -- Drivers on the West Coast pay more at the pump year after year than in anywhere else in the country. There are a multitude of reasons for the region's sky-high gas prices, but no simple solutions.

When the average motorist was paying $1.43 for a gallon of regular unleaded a month ago, for example, Californians were shelling out $1.72 per gallon, according to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Retail prices in nearby Oregon in Washington were also well above the national mean.

"Consumers are getting killed at the pump," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said today at a hearing on the price problem on Capitol Hill. "We have the highest gas prices in the country … [and] it's getting worse."

The West Coast Differential

Why the discrepancy?

The sheer quantity of gasoline consumed by the Golden State is one part of the answer.

"California is the third-largest gasoline consumer in the world — behind only the rest of the United States and Japan," Jim Wells, director of the GAO's Natural Resources and Environment division, told a Senate subcommittee.

Refineries in California operate at near full capacity in an effort to meet the high demand for gas in the state, but California also supplies fuel to Western states such as Oregon — which doesn't have a single refinery of its own — Arizona and Nevada. And high demand makes for high prices.

Without a single oil pipeline cutting across the Rocky Mountains, the West Coast is virtually cut off from the rest of the nation's supply of gas supply, making the region extremely susceptible to sudden gas shortages and the steep price increases they can cause.

"The West Coast gasoline market is isolated from out-of-state sources of gasoline so that supply shortages cannot be easily replaced," said Wells, noting that shipping gas in from out of state on tanker trucks is a slow and very costly undertaking.

California, which often drives price trends for the entire region, experienced unexpected disruptions in its supply of gasoline for five consecutive years, beginning in 1995, according to the GAO.