Arizona Governor Wants Investigation of Rising Gas Prices
March 25th, 2007 | by Brian Carr |It looks like the fine people of Arizona are starting to become a little bit upset with the idea of paying more at the pump, so much so that their Governor, Janet Napolitano, is asking for a federal investigation to find out the reasons behind the latest jump in gas prices.
It turns out, Napolitano and her fellow Arizonans might have a good reason to be upset; over the last month, the state has seen the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline jump by 44 cents. Over the same time frame, the national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded has jumped about 30 cents.
According to an article published on radio station KTAR’s website, energy officials are blaming the higher than expected price jump on several factors, including the annual transition from winter blend gasoline to summer blend gasoline and damage to a major oil refinery in Texas, which supplies much of Arizona’s gasoline.
The article goes on to state that Napolitano isn’t buying those answers because she feels that if the oil industry would spend money and build new refineries - a new refinery hasn’t been built in over 30 years - that they would be better equipped to deal with the annual blend changes and could better handle problems at other refineries.
Unfortunately, this is probably a tune that the 49 other states could and probably will sing now or at some other point this summer. With the way things are currently shaping up, it looks like the national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline could possibly break last summer’s records - and I’m sure there will be many localities throughout the United States that set their own records as well.
Looks like the days of cheap gas are long behind us.
