Google is your friend...
http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/...173.A12294.html
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While the price of crude oil has been relatively steady in recent weeks, the price of wholesale gasoline has risen sharply, causing many to criticize the oil companies and refineries as pocketing the profits.
What started this latest price spike was a refinery fire at a facility near Dumas, Texas, in February. The refinery, a leading regional production facility, was shut down for part of February and March. AAA spokesman Elliott Eki said that this single incident brought a lasting ripple effect, especially through the Western states, as Arizona then turned to Southern California refineries to make up the difference and Southern California looked north for more supplemental supply.
Now those issues are being compounded by overlapping downtime at a refinery in Anacortes, Wash., and another in Southern California. And the region can't as easily import already-refined gasoline as the rest of the country, according to Eki, as very few foreign refineries meet California's fuel specifications. "The West Coast is isolated from the rest of the world," added Eki, both because of geography and because of California's different formulation requirements.
"Daily consumption is right now far outpacing production, and it doesn't take a genius to know what that means," said Eki, predicting that there will be little immediate relief for the West.
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What would your suggestion be? Get the oil companies to build more and better refineries?
OR
TAX 'EM!
If you chose the second one, who do you think will ultimately pay a "windfall profits tax"? The oil company and it's share-holders or the customers of the oil companies (in other words, YOU)?