Its $1.95 to about $2.10 here
I know a guy that works at the Chevron refinery here and I axed him why come is the gas so much even though consumption is up?? He told me that they can only produce so much gas, and right now most of the refineries are at or near %100 production capacity. If they drop the price, people will buy even more, and it will cause a gas shortage, similar to what went on in the mid 70's. Not a good situation. Also, the refineries need to shut down partially for maintanence from time to time, and they cannot if they are at %100 production. If they have an accident or shut down from one refinery it affects tens of thousands of people on the gas consumption end, and hits hard and fast. He says most of the high price is to just curb consumption, but its also a great way to make lots of money in the process. But, I heard on the radio the other day a refinery hasn't even been built for 25 years. I can kind of see why. They can make more money, and if they build another refinery it might cost even more due to the start up cost and other related costs until its paid for itself. I don't have the exact price of a refinery, but I would be willing to bet if you added up the cost to build the refinery, staff it, and keep it running it would be in the billions of dollars. If a fucking casino in Vegas costs $1bil to build, I'm sure a refinery trumps that.
I can guarantee you'll never see the gas price go down though. It might dip, but it will never be $0.98 per gallon it was when I moved into this house 1999.