04-18-07 by Court
As gas prices hit new records in the Bay Area, the rupturing of a pipeline that moves oil between Bakersfield and Shell’s Martinez refinery backed up traffic along I-580 for miles near Tracy Tuesday.
With hundreds of gallons of oil "flowing like a river" down the freeway, and threatening the California Aqueduct, Shell will be responsible for the ultimate clean up costs. The problem is the company and the other majors are likely to clean up more at the pump, where gasoline prices are doomed to climb even higher based on any little disruption.
California is running on about two weeks of gasoline supplies now, half the rest of the nation’s inventory. That’s the reason gasoline is 50 cents higher here than the rest of the nation.
It’s starting to sound like a broken record, as in this morning’s Oakland Tribune report on record prices. With each disruption, the price spikes and oil companies get richer. That’s why they keep us running on low inventories. They make big money.
Let’s hope some powerful politician was caught in the traffic jam Tuesday. Otherwise we will probably hear only silence as usual out of the political establishment as prices scrape the $4 per gallon mark.