It could be coming soon to a pump near you. Merc:

“If crude prices stay where they are now through next summer,” warned Chris Knittel, an associate professor of economics at the University of California-Davis, “we can certainly see $4 a gallon.”

In fact, energy watchers across the state and the country can’t recall this big of a jump at the pump at a time when lower demand usually leads to lower prices.

Unlike previous spikes, driven by local supply woes or refinery disruptions, this one is due to long-simmering matters largely beyond California’s control: political unrest in oil-producing regions and the falling value of the dollar. Add the fact that California in the past decade has increasingly come to depend on oil imported from out of state, and we could be facing staggering prices for quite some time.

This will not effect me much, since I can actually go up to a month between fillups (yes, it is one of the perks of working from home). However, this will disproportionately hit the working class, given the percentage of their income that goes to basic needs like gas for their cars.