Saturday, January 01, 2000
Holiday gas price hikes draw county officials' fire
Butler commission sends protest letters
BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The sharp rise in gasoline prices just before Christmas punctured the jolly yuletide spirit of many motorists in the Tristate and throughout the nation.
The prices at the pumps jumped 15 cents per gallon and higher just before Christmas and are expected to remain high through this New Year's Day weekend.
The price increases especially irked Butler County Commissioner Courtney Combs. And while the price hikes are hardly a phenomenon isolated to Butler County the county commission there isn't willing to accept them without question. Mr. Combs and his two fellow commissioners sent letters this week to Gov. Bob Taft and a host of federal and state legislators asking what can be done to stop the traditional holiday gas price increases.
“The oil companies are gouging the public when they get the opportunity,” Mr. Combs said. “It happened at Thanksgiving and it happened at Christmas. People travel at holidays, and oil companies see a way to make a big profit. People should be protected from the big oil companies.”
Mr. Combs said he bought unleaded gas on Dec. 23 in Fairfield at $1.04 per gallon. When he drove his other car later that day to the same station, the price had jumped to $1.24 per gallon.
Similar increases occurred at other stations Thanksgiving weekend, he added.
Gas price increases have occurred on holiday weekends for many years, but 1999's seemed to be higher than in the past, Mr. Combs said.
“The reasons for it are
greed and excessive profits,” he said.
He said he hopes the commissioners' letter to Mr. Taft and others prompts other county and city officials to protest the high gas prices.
Oil companies and service stations blame the price increases on the dramatic rise of crude oil prices during the past year. The price of crude leaped from $10 a barrel in December 1998 to almost $27 a barrel in December 1999.
“We're paying about three times the amount for our raw material as we did this time last year (1998),” said Chuck Rice, spokesman for Marathon Ashland Petroleum in Findlay, Ohio.
“Since the middle of the year, gas prices have been edging up,” he said. “To characterize this as a holiday phenomenon is incorrect.”
Other factors cited by oil companies and service stations are the decision of OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) to stick to its oil production limits, and the current high demand for gas because of holiday travel and Y2K fears.
“I know to a lot of people, it looks like price-gouging,” said Tariq Al-Abbassi, general manager of Thorton's Food Mart in Butler County's Union Township. “But to us, there's a lot more behind it.”
Thorton's, which generally has lower prices than most other service stations in Greater Cincinnati, raised its price for unleaded gas from $1.18 to $1.32 just before Christmas.
Mr. Al-Abbassi said he and other service stations were simply passing along to their customers the increased prices they paid their gas suppliers.
“It's especially annoying this time of year when you're spending a lot of money as it is,” said Eric McGuire, 24, of Fairfield.
Debra Bronston, 35, of Lincoln Heights, said she was shocked just before Christmas when she saw gas prices jump 20 cents to 25 cents in one day.
“I sure don't like it going up,” she said. “But I'm just glad we have the gas.”
The Christmas price increases were similar throughout Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, said Ginny Hizer, spokeswoman for the American Automobile Association of Cincinnati. Some stations are charging more than $1.60 per gallon for premium gas, she said.
In AAA Cincinnati's last gas survey in early December, the average cost of self-serve unleaded gas was $1.30 per gallon in Ohio, $1.27 per gallon in Kentucky and $1.26 per gallon in Indiana. Nationwide, the average cost of unleaded gas was $1.31.
The western states had the most expensive unleaded gas at $1.40 per gallon, while the southeastern states had the cheapest at $1.25 per gallon.
The gas prices should begin to drop after this weekend, Mrs. Hizer said.
How far the prices drop in the early part of 2000, she said, will depend on the demand for gas and the amount of oil shipped to the United States by the oil-producing nations.
There are scattered service stations in Greater Cincinnati that offer significantly lower prices than others, Mrs. Hizer said.
“You can still find deals out there,” she said. “But you have to look harder to find them.”
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