Schuette and Upton sending letters to BP about gas spike

For more information on gas prices in Michigan see Attorney General Schuette’s Consumer Alert: Increased Gas Prices?

Attorney General Bill Schuette also sent a letter to BP, the owner of the facility in Indiana experiencing an outage, and other major petroleum companies about needing to be transparent in the case of an outage or unexpected event.

By now you’ve probably noticed gas prices in Michigan have shot up this week. The company on Thursday did not answer specific questions from the I-Team about what equipment broke, why will it take a month to fix, what back-up plan BP had in place or why this matter caused retail gasoline prices to jump so significantly in the past few days.

The average cost for a gallon of unleaded in Lansing went up 44 cents Wednesday after going up 40 cents on Tuesday. Proos understands the issue but with crude oil prices so low, he wants to know why we are getting hit with such high gas prices due to one refinery going down. “We will not tolerate any unscrupulous behavior that violates Michigan law when it comes to gouging and price fixing”. Additionally, the Department receives and reviews consumer complaints and inquiries about individual stations.

GasBuddy experts say the higher prices at the pump are the result of a production problem because the BP Whiting Refinery in northwestern Indiana shut down unexpectedly over the weekend. Madigan said that her office was monitoring state gas stations for possible price gouging. Instead he got a statement threatening to prosecute any gas station that got caught gouging and a letter to BP, asking for an explanation.