Instead he blames Big Oil and he wants Congress to investigate.

Huntsman and 21 other governors sent a letter to congressional leaders this week calling for a "bipartisan inquiry."

"You've got to certainly conclude, logically, that we have a whole lot of oil assets . . . in the hands of too few people," Huntsman said at his monthly KUED news conference. "And is that a good thing for the nation's economy? I don't think it is."

Huntsman is one of six Republicans who signed the letter, which questions the explanation provided by oil companies, particularly that problems in refineries have hurt supplies.

"It is difficult to understand how oil companies can be making record profits each quarter without making capital investments in refineries that would address reliability issues," the letter states.

The average price of a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline in Utah on Thursday was a record $3.26 a gallon, according to AAA Utah. That price was 37 cents higher than a month ago and 35 cents higher than last year at this time.

Nationally, the average price was $3.23 cents a gallon, up from $2.86 last month and $2.87 a year ago.

This is not the first time Huntsman has taken issue with a spike in gas prices.

Last fall, the governor launched his own investigation into gasoline prices when the average cost of motor fuel in the state rose well above the national average, sparking an outcry among Utah consumers.

Francine Giani, director of the Utah Department of Commerce, conducted the state's probe. She quickly pointed to Utah's convenience stores and gas station owners as the culprits, contending they were gouging consumers at the pump.

"I still have some of those same thoughts in many respects," Giani said. "Certainly, the scope of a national investigation will need to be broader. To get to the bottom of these high prices, we're going to need to take a lot of little looks before we have a [complete] understanding of what is going on."

John Hill, executive director of the Utah Petroleum Marketers and Retailers Association, disputed Giani's findings by arguing last year that retailers for a short time were making only a few cents a gallon above the three or four cents a gallon that they normally made.

He said if Congress wants to get to the bottom of high gasoline prices, it needs to begin looking back to the 1990s when the Federal Trade Commission started allowing the nation's big oil companies to merge with one another.

"Where we once had around 10 big oil companies we now only have a handful. And that handful control the [crude oil] refining capacity in this country, and there's not much competition among them anymore," Hill said.

John Christensen, who is working in a Salt Lake area restaurant while he is going to school studying mental health counseling, would like to think a congressional investigation would make a difference.

"I'm not optimistic, though," he said. "There is a lot of hocus pocus going on in Washington about gasoline. You hear, well, there is a refining shortage. Then you hear, well, we've got enough oil to last us 200 years. But the price of gas keeps going up."