San Diego could see a new record high price for gasoline soon. Gas prices are up 35 cents a gallon since Monday and they could jump another 20 cents a gallon by the beginning of next week.
The old record gas price was reached in June 2008 when the average price for a gallon of regular hit $4.64.
Concerns about refineries, pipelines and the supply of summer blended fuel have pushed wholesale prices up sharply in the past week.
"You're going to see the highest prices of your lifetime within the next 10 days or so," said Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service. "And I don't base that on any sort of wild-eyed predictions, but wholesale prices have gone ballistic here in the last week. And there's some real fears about whether there's enough supply on the West Coast."
Utility Consumer's Action Network tracks local prices. UCAN predicts the super spike in the price of gas will be a short term situation that will abate when gas stations can start selling winter blended fuel. That can happen at the end of October.
The October surge is a surprise to UCAN's Charles Langley.
"The reality is, is that every year for the last 16 years that we've been tracking gas prices in San Diego, prices have gone down in the autumn," said Langley.
The current price is running sharply higher than at this time a year ago.
