Gasoline Cracks $5 a Gallon at the Pump in California

Over the weekend, I noticed that the price of gasoline at the pump has really skyrocketed in anticipation of the summer travel season. At one gas station I stopped at along Highway 5 near Bakersfield in California, the price of regular gas was $4.999 per gallon.

Since gas stations won't give you one-tenth of a cent in change, the price is essentially five dollars a gallon. And if you have to get high octane gas, you would have the pleasure of paying $5.20 a gallon.

Of course, this excludes the unusual gas situations in areas such as Catalina Island, which has very few cars to begin with. There you would be paying over seven dollars a gallon.

If you think oil and natural gas is a good area to invest in, you may want to consider the oil and gas Master Limited Partnerships, also known as MLPs. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has a selection of a dozen oil and gas MLPs, mst of which yield in excess of 8%.

A couple of examples are BreitBurn Energy Partners (BBEP) which has a yield of 9.5% and Mid-Con Energy Partners (MCEP) paying 9.2%. Also, Vanguard Natural Resources (VNR) is structured as an LLC as opposed to a limited partnership. It pays a yield of 8.2%.

Talk to your accountant before putting MLPs in your retirement plan, as their can be adverse tax consequences. But if you own them outside your retirement plan, they can provide you with a very decent income, subject to interest rate risks of course.

Disclosure: Author didn't own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com