ST. PAUL –
Lately, motorists in the Midwest have felt more pain at the pump as gasoline
prices have soared, triggered by a combination of refinery outages, high oil
costs and low inventory, the Washington Post reports. For example, in
Minnesota, pump prices rose 80 cents in under a month, reaching a record $4.27
per gallon. North Dakota stations posted prices at $4.24 per gallon, a 64-cent
increase in less than 30 days — and also a record.
The U.S. Energy
Information Administration (EIA) pointed to “both planned and unplanned
refinery maintenance” in Midwest refineries as part of the reason for the push
upwards. The smaller gasoline output “significantly depleted” inventories. The
agency predicted another three weeks of shortened supply before extra fuel
could arrive from the Gulf Coast pipeline.
“I’m not a
conspiracy theorist, but it is really interesting, the timing of all this,”
said John Thompson, a spokesman for AAA’s Mid-Atlantic region. Thompson said
the timing of large price hikes just ahead of Memorial Day weekend was
terrible. “We hope that what we’re seeing is short-lived.”
EIA analysts
Doug MacIntyre attributed the Midwest price increase to “a combination of
factors, but the main thing is we got refinery outages. Some of that for
maintenance and some unplanned outages. And we’ve got inventories that have
been drawn down to some degree because of earlier refinery issues.”
A combination
of factors cause gas prices go up each spring, Since the year 2000 and the
final implementation of the Clean Air Act amendments prices most often peak around
Memorial Day as a variety of deadlines occur. Some of the problems in the
Midwest were related to handoffs related to these deadlines. NACS developed a
fact sheet, “Why Gas Prices Historically Go Up in the Spring,”
that addresses some of these issues.