California May Face Higher Pump Prices on Top of Fires, Blackout

(Bloomberg) -- Californians facing forced blackouts and wildfires are set to get hit with higher gasoline prices as well.

Even though the mass power shutoffs and wildfires haven’t directly affected California refineries, unrelated breakdowns are slowing fuel production and pushing prices higher anyway, especially in the southern part of the state. Wholesale prices in Los Angeles have jumped 26.5 cents a gallon versus benchmark futures in the past two days.

The jump in wholesale prices typically takes a few days to filter through to retail stations. It threatens to reverse a decline at the pump over the past couple weeks that brought the state’s average down to $4.05 a gallon.

L.A. Fire Expands as More High Winds Arrive: California Update

On a more positive note, concerns that gas stations would lose power during the blackouts didn’t really come to pass, with GasBuddy.com showing around 2% of stations in both the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas without electricity.

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