This article was edited at 2:51 p.m. Oct. 7, 2012, to include the average gas price for Sunday in the Inland Empire.
In the face of alarmingly rising gas prices, Gov. Jerry Brown Sunday took steps to ease the crunch by ordering an early transition to winter-blend gasoline, it was reported.
The governor ordered the California Air Resources Board to allow refiners and gas stations to roll out the winter blend before its previously-scheduled Oct. 31 sales date, an action the governor said will increase gas supplies up to 8-10 percent, "with only negligible air quality impacts," according to City News Service.
The move was intended to reverse a sudden scare in the wholesale gasoline market that saw prices shoot up nearly 50 cents a gallon in six days.
In a letter released at noon, as California gas prices fluctuated widely
for the seventh straight day, the governor said the market variations were
imposing "unacceptable cost impacts on consumers and small businesses."
This, he said, was threatening "significant economic disruption, and serious harm to public safety and welfare."
An analyst said California's wholesale gasoline market has gone "into a
panic about the adequacy of California fuel supplies."
Jeffrey Spring of the Automobile Club of Southern California said the market disruption followed a power failure at the ExxonMobil Torrance Refinery and closure of a Chevron pipeline that moves crude oil to Northern California last Monday.
Other pressure on the state's gas market includes local refineries
dropping production levels, energy companies exporting fuel to Mexico and other countries, and allowing inventory to dwindle in anticipation of switching over to production of winter blend gasoline, Spring said.
In the Inland Empire Sunday, the average price of one gallon of unleaded
gas was $4.67, up about a nickel from Saturday's previous record price.
"I am directing the Air Resources Board immediately to take whatever
steps are necessary to allow for an early transition to winter-blend
gasoline'' to be sold in California, the governor said in a letter to Mary
Nichols, his appointed head of the CARB.
Some clean air advocates had worried that such a move would hurt air
quality in October, which is one of the hottest months in coastal California because of Santa Ana windstorms and other seasonal weather fluctuations.
The governor said that winter gas evaporates more quickly than summer blend, which takes longer to evaporate and is better during the smoggiest months of the year in the summer.
Brown said he expected gas prices to settle down, now that the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance has resumed operations following an electricity
outage last week.
A Tesoro refinery in the South Bay is expected to resume production next week, after its maintenance shutdown.
