During my recent vacation to California (one of the best I’ve had, for a lot of reasons), my quick calculation revealed that Californians are paying ~30% more for gasoline than Texans are. Okay by me; California air was a lot cleaner than it would have been otherwise—i.e., without the taxes and restrictions that I suspected had driven their state’s gasoline prices up—and I liked breathing cleaner air than they would have had otherwise. Paying $2.70/gal for ten days of driving down that beautiful coast was no problem for me.
So, why did I hear several Californians, at different times during the week, complain about the price of their gasoline versus prices in other states? Must be those greedy right-wing corporations secretly colluding with Rove to punish the big blue state, I almost said. (When in Rome, do as the Goths do? Nah, bad idea; better to be a polite, noncommittal tourist. Why come across like a jerk when I’m in the middle of the best vacation in memory? So I just shrugged and empathized each time.)
On my return to Texas, though, I double-checked my assumption about California’s taxes and restrictions. Bingo: The DOE has a nice page explaining the California fuel price difference. Here’s an excerpt (from a page that looks to be at least two years old by now):
The State of California operates its own reformulated gasoline program with more stringent requirements than Federally-mandated clean gasolines. In addition to the higher cost of cleaner fuel, there is a combined State and local sales and use tax of 7.25 percent on top of an 18.4 cent-per-gallon federal excise tax and an 18.0 cent-per-gallon State excise tax. Refinery margins have also been higher due in large part to price volatility in the region.
In short, cleaner air costs extra; personally, I'm happy to pay the premium while wearing a smile when I visit. And when I'm in Texas, I'm happy to receive that cleaner air two days after Californians have used it. Thank you, California.
[Incidentally, by vacationing domestically instead of in Europe, I saved a bundle of money. Part of that money just went for a new laptop, to make mobile blogging easier next time I go to wine country. The rest of it is still in the savings account, which is denominated in dollars.]
