Southern California Rise in Gasoline Prices Set One-Month Record

Link to LA Times.

“Prices have now gone up even more than they did during the spike in October and the one last February, and more quickly than they did during any one-month stretch in 2008, when we had another big spike,” said Auto Club spokesman Jeffrey Spring.

One of the reasons cited by analysts is Southern California's early switch to more expensive summer-blend gasoline. Northern California is about to make the same switch from cheaper winter blend gasoline.

Unusually high levels of refinery maintenance in California is cited as another reason.
But big-money investment speculation, from hedge fund and commodity pools, has also soared in recent months, based on bets that the price of oil and gasoline would rise.

No mention of the policy decision in Washington to a) kill the Keystone XL 1.0; and, b) delay decision on Keystone XL 2.0 until at least July, 2013.