No... I'm not referring to my promise to Ally to eat fewer refried beans.  I'm talking about a potential way to not only lower the price of gasoline (at least in some areas), but also a way to reduce the volatility in price that can be experienced, especially in the summer.  Now then, this won't lead to a drastic price reduction, but it's potentially as good or better than what a gas tax holiday would provide.  Below is a map (a little dated, but I believe mostly still accurate), which shows the type and distribution of gasoline requirements across the country (click on the image for a full sized version):

As you can see, there are 16 different types of reformulated gasoline that are required in this country.  Some of these types of gasoline only serve a small region of the country (such as what is required in Southeastern Wisconsin and Northeastern Illinois).  Having all these different types of boutique fuels is a strain on our maxed out refining capacity, because only one or two refineries may make any one type of reformulated gasoline.  Because of the size of the market for any type of gasoline, it just doesn't make sense to have more than that.  But if that refinery goes down for some reason, then the supply of that type of gasoline drops and the price can skyrocket in the effect area.

My plan is to reduce the number of reformulated blends down to one.  I don't care which one (as long as it's not the ethanol blend required in Wisconsin), just pick one.  Either you get reformulated, or you get regular gasoline.  That would increase refining capacity by taking advantage of economies of scale, and would help bring the price down somewhat.  It would also decrease volatility because areas of the country required to have reformulated gasoline would be served by more refineries than they are now, so the loss of any one refinery wouldn't be devastating.  Of course my ideal short solution would be to stop using reformulated gasoline all together, but I'm willing to compromise with the environmentalists and throw them a bone.

This is obviously not a long term solution.  It's a short term, quick way to reduce prices somewhat.  Long term solutions would include building more refineries, and drilling for more oil.  But refineries take time to build, and creating more infrastructure to drill for oil does too.  And realistically, it would just require an executive order by the President to the EPA, and because there would still be reformulated blends in use, it would not violate the Clean Air Act (though obviously I'm not a lawyer).

You can find out more at the Econbrowser.