UC Berkeley economics professor Severin Borenstein knows as much as anyone about California gas prices.

In fact, he came up with “mystery gasoline surcharge” to explain the difference between the expected price after accounting for California’s taxes and fees and the higher price at the pump.

In a recent interview with Politico, Borenstein said that in addition to the mystery surcharge, the state’s high gas prices also reflect the unwillingness of drivers to search out stations with lower prices.

“If you go around the country and you look at the dispersion of prices among stations near one another, California is just a huge outlier,” he said. “You just do not see stations across the street from each other that are 40 cents a gallon different in most other parts of the country. In other parts of the West, the price variation is a few cents. You do not see 40-cent differences. Sometimes in California, it’s more than 60 cents (higher) a few blocks away

“So in some sense, whose fault is that? If drivers are unwilling to drive a few blocks to save 60 cents a gallon, we definitely have a competition problem. If you’re buying 10 gallons of gasoline, and you’re unwilling to drive a couple blocks to save $6 on that, it does say something about how much you really care.”

Too Few Stations, Not Many Off-Brands

Borenstein also said that California should clear the bureaucratic hurdles so that more gas stations are built.

“I think we should stop putting restrictions on building new gas stations, which is basically protecting incumbent gas stations from competition.”

He also noted that California has “far fewer off-brand stations” than other states.

Read the complete Politico interview at this link.