O.C. gas hits record high

The bad news for Newport-Mesa drivers got worse Thursday as Orange County shattered its all-time record — set 24 hours ago — for the average price of a regular gallon of gasoline.

According to the Automobile Club of Southern California, the county average for the cheapest gallon Thursday was $3.54, up 1 cent from Wednesday. The sum represents a 54-cent increase from a month ago and nearly the same increase from a year ago.

Marie Montgomery, a spokeswoman for the Automobile Club, said it was anyone’s guess how much more the numbers would climb.

“We can’t really expect anything, but it’s been doing this for over a week in many places and slightly less than a week in Orange County,” she said. “It’s hard to know. You expect it to keep going up until it stops, but we don’t know when that is.”

Until the last week, Orange County’s record gas price was $3.48 in May 2007.

The costs have surged in recent weeks due to the weakening value of the dollar and a growing number of investments in wholesale gasoline, but this week, the problem was worsened by crude oil hitting record prices around the world.

Automobile Club spokeswoman Elaine Beno said the crude prices had partly led to the higher costs at the pump — but, in fact, gas stations were feeling the impact of the crude increases from a few weeks ago, not from the record $110 per barrel set in recent days.

“The price of crude does not mean that tomorrow, the price of crude is factored into the price of gas,” she said.

“It takes several weeks for the price of crude to make its way to the pump.”

In other words, Beno said, the surge in oil prices this week could cause gas expenses to rise even more in the coming month.

For wealthier residents, those rising gas prices can mean having to choose between a road trip down the coast or a night on the town, but those in the lower-income brackets often have to trade off necessities.

Laura Miller, the executive director of the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa, said she and her colleagues were working with homeless residents to pare expenses down to a minimum.

“It’s a major expense for them to get to work,” she said. “So we’ve really had to change their budgets around. Those are decisions everyone is making, and our clients have less resources than most people to make them.”

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com. MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.