THE PERFECT TIME TO DO THE RIGHT THING:

California's landmark cap-and-trade program to limit carbon emissions just got bigger. Effective Jan. 1 it expanded to wrap in gasoline and diesel, a move oil companies have warned would trigger higher pump prices. [...]

Even as motor fuels fell under cap and trade's mandates, gas prices on a statewide basis edged down. The average price yesterday was $2.65 per gallon, compared with $2.66 per gallon a week earlier, based on AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report. The federal Energy Information Administration listed the price at $2.66 per gallon for all areas of the West Coast with reformulated gasoline. That was down from $2.67 last week. EIA does not release figures for just California.

Crude oil prices also fell yesterday. Brent crude closed at $53.11 per barrel, the lowest price since 2009. That will result in lower gas prices over the next six to eight weeks, said Tim Hess, an EIA analyst. Every $10-per-barrel drop in crude typically leads to a 24-cent-per-gallon decline in the price of gas, Hess said.

"The fact that oil prices are so low right now makes all this a much less big deal," Lucas Davis, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, said about cap and trade. "If anything, people are going to be spending less this year on gasoline and diesel."

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