The result is that pump prices have jumped 20 cents a gallon in the past month alone, according to data from the Energy Information Administration, and Republicans are beginning to use the energy inflation as a political talking point.
But the pain has been inflicted unevenly across the country, with consumers on the coasts paying much higher prices than those in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions, where supplies of oil are plentiful.
One reason crude is so plentiful in the Midwest is that new production technologies have boosted production in oilfields that were once thought to be exhausted or too costly to develop. After two decades of steady decline, total U.S. oil production began rising again in 2009, according to the EIA. Increased production from Canadian tar sands fields also has boosted Midwest supplies.
But as domestic and Canadian production have risen, pipeline bottlenecks have cropped up – especially over the 500 miles from Cushing, Okla., to Houston, the nation’s largest oil shipping port and home to about half its refining capacity.
“We lack infrastructure to catch up with the fact that there's been this big change in oil production,” said Yergin. “Eight years ago, North Dakota was not the fourth-largest oil producing state in the country. So we need new pipelines, and the lack of those pipelines -- the lack of catching up -- is reflected in the disparity (in prices).”
Until last year, the benchmark price of U.S. crude based on Cushing delivery, known as West Texas Intermediate, closely tracked the global benchmark, called Brent North Sea.
But in the past year, as rising supplies of captive Midwest supplies depressed prices, the gap widened to once-unimaginable levels. By last fall, the discount for West Texas Intermediate had widened to as much as $30 a barrel before shrinking back to about half as much.
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