The average price of a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline in Los Angeles County rose Friday for the seventh consecutive day after decreasing 78 of the previous 80 days, increasing 1 cent to $5.352.
The average price has increased 10.6 cents over the past seven days, including 3.1 cents Thursday, according to figures from the AAA and Oil Price Information Service. It is 94.9 cents more than one year ago but 10.6 cents less than one month ago.
The average price is $1.11 less than the record high of $6.462 set June 14.
“This week’s record-high temperatures greatly increased the probability of refinery power blackouts in the state, which can take refineries offline for days or even weeks after the outages,” said Doug Shupe, the Automobile Club of Southern California’s corporate communications and programs manager.
“Although no outages have been reported so far, sellers with extra supplies of gasoline have raised their prices and imported gasoline on cargo ships is not being delivered right now in anticipation of future need, which drove up Los Angeles wholesale gasoline prices sharply in the last week. In addition, there are some regional refinery issues that have reduced gasoline production and inventories.”
The national average price dropped for the 87th consecutive day since rising to a record, falling 1.3 cents to $3.738. It has dropped $1.278 since rising to a record $5.016 on June 14.
The national average price is 7.1 cents less than one week ago and 29.5 cents lower than one month ago, but 55.7 cents more than one year ago.
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