Gasoline

Gasoline prices are keeping up their record-setting ways. California drivers paid an average of $4.358 for a gallon of regular gasoline, up 6.6 cents from a week earlier, the Energy Department said Monday. That's a fresh record high for this time of year and is 48.4 cents above the year-earlier price. Nationally, the average rose 7.2 cents to $3.793, also a record for this week, according to Energy Department statistics. A year earlier, the average U.S. price was 27.3 cents lower.

Retail gasoline prices fell in California and across much of the nation over the last week, while crude oil recovered a little of the previous weeks' losses. The average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline in California fell 3.1 cents to $4.336 a gallon, according to the Energy Department's weekly survey of fuel prices, released Monday. That followed two weeks of increases totaling 28.1 cents a gallon. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular gasoline in California was 12.1 cents cheaper.

California's largest pipeline operator has for months spurned a distributor's request for a connection that would make it easier to import badly needed gasoline. The dispute between Kinder Morgan Energy Partners and Chemoil Corp. is in many ways a run-of-the-mill conflict between business rivals. But it offers a rare glimpse into the kinds of bottlenecks and market control matters that help make California's unique blend of cleaner-burning gasoline so expensive. What's more, it shows how difficult these troubles are to fix. "I'm painfully aware of this project," James Boyd, a state energy commissioner, said during a hearing in June on the state's petroleum market problems.

A gas station that also offers E85 ethanol and biodiesel fuels has opened in Fullerton, becoming the first of more than 200 so-called clean mobility centers slated for the state. The Propel Clean Mobility Center at 1124 E. Chapman Ave., which opened Wednesday, was partially funded by grants from the California Energy Commission and the U.S. Energy Department. "People are looking for alternatives. They're looking for transportation options that aren't dependent on petroleum," said Matt Horton, chief executive of Propel Fuels in Redwood City, Calif., which at its new Fullerton station also offers a self-service bicycle repair station, recycling containers, free air and water, and maps of rail stations, bike paths and busways.

Something was wrong with Sally Ann. For months, she sputtered and choked, and Barry Treahy's remedies weren't working. He kept changing her fuel filters. Then he rebuilt her carburetor. Finally, he cut into her gas tank, cleaned out the mysterious caramel-colored gunk and patched her up -- twice. Disaster struck on a summer day in San Diego, when Treahy's beloved 20-foot fishing boat was parked street side with the outer hull plug open to drain any residual water.

It sounds too good to be true: A residential system that allows people to make fuel from old beer, leftover wine and other waste products and use it to run their vehicles. That's what inventors of the E-Fuel MicroFueler claim, and there's support for the idea in government, industry and pop culture. MicroFueler buyers are eligible for a $5,000 tax credit. Former L.A. Laker Shaquille O'Neal is an investor in the system's distributor. The $10,000 E-Fuel MicroFueler consists of a 250-gallon tank for organic feedstock, such as waste wine and beer, and a still that converts it to pure ethanol, or E-Fuel.

California drivers are keeping their feet on the brakes, with gasoline demand falling for eight months in a row. Gasoline consumption in California totaled 1.23 billion gallons in October, down 1.8% from the 1.26 gallons used the previous October, according to a report released Tuesday by California State Board of Equalization Chairman Jerome E. Horton. The last time gas use increased was in January 2011, when consumption rose 2.7%. Consumption was flat in February. “High gas prices appear to be directly affecting fuel consumption in California,” Horton said.

Gasoline rose from a three-week low as European stocks gained on speculation governments will stem the region's debt crisis. Futures advanced 1% as the Stoxx Europe 600 Index climbed 0.6% in New York. Euro-area finance ministers are scheduled to hold a conference call today to discuss adding 200 billion euros ($261 billion US) in additional funding through the International Monetary Fund to ease the region's debt crisis. "We've had some surprising strength in Europe today," said Peter Beutel, president of trading advisory company Cameron Hanover in New Canaan, Connecticut.

The gap between what California motorists and the rest of the nation pay for retail gasoline widened again over the last week as pump prices rose throughout the state. Analysts said that the price jump was probably the result of low production and tight supplies. The average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline in California climbed 5.4 cents to $3.153, the Energy Department said Monday. That set a high for the year for the second straight week and marked the fifth straight week that the state's prices have topped $3 a gallon.

Re "A big surprise on gas," Opinion, Aug. 11 Indur M. Goklany and Jerry Taylor have performed the typical sleight of hand that gives political pundits a bad name. They have taken statistics -- in this case, average disposable income and the average price of gasoline over the last few decades -- to make the claim that gasoline is more affordable now than it was in the 1960s. What they fail to acknowledge is that changes in average income do not reflect the fact that wealth is much more concentrated today than it was in the 1960s.

Falling energy and gasoline prices helped keep inflation in check last month and also pushed consumer confidence to a four-year high, according to two reports. An index of prices paid by factories, farms and other producers fell 0.2% in April from the previous month, the Labor Department said Friday. It was the first drop of the year and the most substantial one since October. Prices were 1.9% higher compared with April 2011, but represented seven consecutive months of slower increases after surging 7% in September.

California's streak of seven straight weeks of gasoline price declines has ended because of widespread refinery maintenance shutdowns that have reduced fuel supplies by nearly a third compared with a year ago. In California, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $4.213 a gallon, up 2.7 cents from a week earlier, according to the Energy Department's weekly survey of service stations, released Monday. The U.S. average continued to fall, dropping 4 cents to $3.790 a gallon, the Energy Department survey showed.

Retail gasoline prices continued to fall nationally and in California over the last week, the Energy Department said. The U.S. average price for a gallon of regular gasoline fell 4 cents to $3.830, according to the Energy Department's weekly survey that was released Monday. The U.S. average hit its peak for the year of $3.941 a gallon on April 2 and has fallen for four straight weeks. A year earlier, U.S. drivers spent 5.1 cents more for a gallon of gas. In California, the average cost for a gallon of regular gasoline fell 1.7 cents to $4.186.

Car shoppers will soon find two Ford Focus sedans sitting side by side when they visit the dealership — one with a gas tank and another with batteries. In a milestone for the auto industry, an automaker will give consumers an option to purchase the same model of a vehicle with either a traditional combustion engine or one powered only by electricity. It will mark the first time that buyers can compare the different powertrains on the same car. An electric Focus, next to the gas version, provides, "more transparency to what it means to pay for an electric vehicle," said Thilo Koslowski, an automotive analyst at research firm Gartner Inc. Ford Motor Co.'s strategy of producing an electric car that shares the platform, body style and many components of the standard gasoline model is a departure from other automakers pioneering the electric car market.

Gasoline prices fell again around the nation, the Energy Department's weekly survey showed, with the U.S. average dropping below the year-earlier price for the first time in 2 1/2 years. Analysts called it a milestone, even though it probably didn't feel like much relief to motorists. The national average fell 5.2 cents to $3.87 a gallon, the Energy Department said. The average was nearly a penny below the price a year earlier, the first time that has happened since October 2009.

Gasoline prices dropped around much of the nation for the second straight week, an Energy Department survey showed. But don't get too excited. History suggests that prices will rise at least a few more times in the next few weeks, analysts said. Fuel prices have peaked before mid-May just once in the last 20 years, according to Energy Department statistics, and it hasn't happened since 1998. The Energy Department's latest survey, conducted Monday, found that the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline fell 1.7 cents to $3.922 since the previous Monday.

* Amoco will begin marketing a cleaner form of all three grades of its gasoline in the Chicago area this summer. * Arco introduced its EC-1 low-emission regular gasoline in Southern California last September, targeting older vehicles not equipped with catalytic converters. The company is working on cleaner-burning gasolines for newer cars. * Conoco began testing its environmentally improved gasoline, Regular RXL, in the Denver area in March.

The Texaco station on the hill had been open only an hour Sunday, and already it was a mob scene. Mack trucks with 50-gallon tanks vied for space near the pumps alongside young men on motorcycles. Sedans and SUVs battled to nose their way into the scrum. Scores of people who had hiked up the road on foot carting buckets, old vegetable oil jugs, blue spring-water containers -- anything that could hold liquid -- jostled to be next in the melee that passed for a line. Men shook their fists and yelled at one another above the blasts of horns and revving of engines.

WASHINGTON - Facing heat for high gasoline prices, President Obama tried to shift the focus to Congress, Republicans and energy traders, calling for legislation that he said would "put more cops on the beat" to crack down on potential manipulation of the oil market. Obama called on Congress to provide more money for regulators and increase penalties for market manipulators. The president, flanked by Treasury SecretaryTimothy F. Geithnerand Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., suggested that traders and speculators are affecting the price of oil and digging into Americans' pocketbooks.

Four straight weeks of declines at the pump have dropped regular gasoline at a few service stations in Southern California below $4 a gallon for the first time since February, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California's Weekend Gas Watch. The average cost of a gallon of regular in California is still 6.5 cents higher than it was at this time last year, at $4.245. But that is a drop of 4.5 cents a gallon since last week and a drop of 11.6 cents since last month. "A little more price competition appears to be happening among gas stations, which is good news for drivers," said Auto Club spokesman Jeffrey Spring.