BROCK VERGAKIS - The Associated Press | Posted: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 11:00 pm
SALT LAKE CITY -- The average price motorists in Utah and the Mountain West pay for gasoline is the lowest in the nation and consumers can largely attribute that savings to geography, industry experts said Wednesday.
In Utah, the average price for a gallon of gasoline was $2.34 on Wednesday, making it the lowest in the country, according to AAA, formerly the American Automobile Association.
Mountain West states Wyoming, Idaho and Montana followed Utah in having the nation's lowest gas prices. All four states have two things in common: close access to fuel from Wyoming and Canada that reduces transportation costs and high elevations that make it possible to use lower-grade gas. Regular gas is typically rated 87 octane in much of the country, but in Utah it's typically sold as 85 octane.
The octane rating of gasoline says how much fuel can be compressed before it ignites. If gas ignites from compression instead of from a spark club, it creates a knocking noise and can damage an engine. The lower a gasoline's octane rating is, the less compression it can handle. But in Utah, where Salt Lake City's elevation is more than 4,000 feet above sea level, lower octane gas can be used.
"Regular is regular. Basically, the octane requirement goes down as the altitude goes up. Your 85 octane is equivalent to 87 octane at sea level as far as performance is concerned," said Michael Burdette, senior analyst at the National Energy Information Center, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Typically, the higher the octane level, the more expensive it is for petroleum companies to manufacture the gasoline.
"Inside the refinery you're using a little more of those octane-rich blends than you're using to make an 85. I don't know what the price at the pump would be, but it would cost a little bit more in the refinery," said Tim Hogan, legislative and regulatory analysis manager for the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association.
The price of gas is expected to rise as much as 15 cents per gallon nationwide in the coming weeks, according to a U.S. Energy Department report released Tuesday.
But AAA of Utah spokeswoman Rolayne Fairclough said that prices in Utah likely won't increase as much as they will in the rest of the country.
"The Intermountain West is just a different market from the rest of country. We're isolated. We have our own supply and refineries. We don't have the imports coming from the coast," she said.
That isolation proves beneficial to consumers, said John Hill, executive director of the Utah Petroleum Marketers and Retailers Association.
"One good thing is that we have five independent refineries in North Salt Lake, so we're kind of an isolated market in that regard. We get product mostly out of Wyoming, so we're not part of the Gulf Coast downflow. Those are the big pluses," Hill said.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C6.