Bay Area Gas Prices Surge Ever Higher as Ukraine Crisis Deepens
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) -- The invasion of Ukraine continues to impact gas prices in the Bay Area.
Triple A reports the average price for unleaded in Napa, Santa Rosa, San Rafael and San Francisco has surged beyond $5 per gallon. Cities like San Jose and Oakland are edging closer to that price.
- Find the lowest gas prices in the Bay Area on GasBuddy.com
Oil experts say the cost of a barrel was already going up thanks to lifted COVID-19 restrictions around the country. Now the crisis in Ukraine made for a perfect storm.
At one point on Thursday, the trading cost of a barrel of oil hit 116 dollars.
On Lombard Street Thursday, Joseph Longontti paid $72 to fill up his car.
"It's usually only $55, so all of a sudden now it's 15 dollars more," he told KPIX. "This thing...I just got this. It drinks gas a little bit. It was a bad move."
Russia is the third largest producer of oil in the world and sanctions over Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine are translating to higher prices at the pump.
"Russia will continue to impact the global markets and impact the prices that consumers pay," said Frank Macchiarola of the American Petroleum Institute.
California doesn't use any Russian oil and produces about 30 percent of what Californians need -- much of that coming from the Bakersfield area. The gap is made up with oil from Alaska, Saudi Arabia and Ecuador.
"What we're seeing today in the world is what happens when we're not as energy independent as we could be -- if we were allowed to produce a little bit more," said Kevin Slagle of the Western States Petroleum Association.
With the squeeze on globally, producers here are asking for the capacity to get more crude out of the ground.
"Permits have been that used to maybe take six or eight weeks to get done, even under Governor Brown are now taking months or years. There's a real hold up at CalGen. It's become a defacto production ban," explained Slagle.
The American Petroleum Institute says things could even out by 2023 as rigs that went silent during the pandemic start producing once again.
"We've seen producers respond to the current price environment. We've seen increased rig counts here in the United States. We've seen historic levels of production in the Permian Basin," said Macchiarola.