Dicker: A Break on Gas Prices for July 4

As the Fourth of July long weekend approaches, U.S. drivers are getting a break on gasoline prices.
By Daniel Dicker ,

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) -- As the Fourth of July approaches, many of us will take to the road. What kind of gas prices should we expect?

I sat down with Brittany Umar to talk about gas prices throughout the country, where drivers haven't seen the usual seasonal spike in prices we normally get heading into Independence Day weekend. Instead, they've been treated to lower prices coming into July, with a national 17-cent drop in the last two weeks.

Although prices are up a bit from last year, that drop in price going into the summer months has been welcome relief for drivers, and the national average of $3.50 a gallon shouldn't spoil anyone's outing.

Unless, of course, you live on the West Coast, where high temperatures have caused a rash of refinery outages, including one at the 165,000-barrel-a-day Shell refinery in Martinez, Calif. and a short outage at the

Phillips 66

(PSX) - Get Report

Arroyo Grande refinery, which feeds San Francisco. Because of these unplanned minor shutdowns, gas prices have spiked on the West Coast and are now hovering close to $4.00 a gallon.

The West coast has emission standards that are more stringent than the rest of the country requiring dedicated refiners to manufacture their gas, so the good news is that the high prices drivers are experiencing there are unlikely to spread to the rest of the nation.

I talk more about gas prices for the Fourth of July weekend with Brittany in the video above.

At the time of publication, Dicker had no positions in securities mentioned.

Follow @dan_dicker

This article was written by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage.

Dan Dicker has been a floor trader at the New York Mercantile Exchange with more than 25 years of oil trading experience. He is a licensed commodities trade adviser.

Dan is currently President of

MercBloc LLC,

a wealth management firm and is the author of

"Oil's Endless Bid,"

published in March of 2011 by John Wiley and Sons.

Dan Dicker has appeared as an energy analyst since 2002 with all the major financial news networks. He has lent his expertise in hundreds of live radio and television broadcasts on

CNBC

,

Bloomberg

US and UK and

CNNfn.

Dan obtained a bachelor of arts degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1982.

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