By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
For Maricopa County motorists, high gasoline prices are no longer an occasional inconvenience but a recurring hit to their wallets.
The story is the same every year. Every summer as temperatures rise, prices at the pump jump as well, often by as much as fifty cents per gallon in Maricopa County. Yet these price fluctuations, as frustrating as they have been for drivers, may soon look mild compared to what’s coming.
Arizona’s Historic Fuel Problem Will Only Get Worse In the Future
Arizona’s chronically high gas prices have been driven by two key factors. The first is that Maricopa County is required to use a specialized “clean burning gasoline” (CBG) blend that only a handful of refineries from around the country can produce. Compounding this issue is that Arizona does not have any in-state refining capacity of our own, making us reliant on imported refined fuel from high-cost California.
These complications have made our state vulnerable to price shocks. In 2003, a major pipeline failure limited gasoline shipments into Arizona and caused immediate price spikes and shortages.
In 2022, while gas prices did increase throughout the nation due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Maricopa County motorists were hit with significant price spikes, and consistently paid far above the national average. In 2023 and again in 2024, price volatility in Phoenix surged even when national averages stabilized.
And now this problem is only going to get worse…
