"I think that it's reasonable to have some amount of skepticism," Nelson said. "I know with our local refineries, at least for the two that are down, that from everything that I've been able to assess they have been pushing them pretty hard, and my understanding is they had unexpected reasons they needed to go ahead and shut them down."

Even so, Utah Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said he is surprised by how fast gasoline prices have increased this year.

"I share that same concern that we could see $4 gas," said Valentine, who added that he believes the time is right to build a new oil refinery in Utah.

"We've got crude in the Uintah Basin that is being stored and wells being capped because there is nobody that can take their capacity," Valentine said. "There is more production capacity than we have refinery capacity by a long ways."

Last fall, when Utah gasoline prices were at record levels, Valentine said significant profits were being made on the refinery side. Then, as national prices began to fall while Utah prices remained high, retailers began to reap record profits.

About 30 percent of Utah's crude oil comes from Canada, 15 percent from within the state and the rest from Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, according to the UPA.

"It's true that Utah refineries do import some crude oil from Canada," Peacock said. "Even this supply of crude has been short due to planned and unplanned outages of syncrude plants in Alberta, which has increased the cost of those crudes plus local crudes."

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E-mail: danderton@desnews.com