When I left town four weeks ago, prices for pump-your-own unleaded gas at my local station hovered between $1.57 and $1.59. In the Rocky Mountain states, where gasoline taxes are lower or nonexistent, they were about the same.
I return to find $2.07 (the lowest price anywhere) at two competing stations in our little village alongside I-5. The two stations, a huge Flying J truck stop and a newer Arco, are in a persistent state of price jousting, willing to adjust their signs daily to keep even with each other. A Texaco and a Chevron on the opposite corner are usually 15 cents higher. Santa Clarita and San Fernando are, as usual, at least 10 cents more.
With an efficient car, a large gas tank and a little planning, I can usually manage to fill up at the cheapest rate. But as you all know, signs in Malibu advertise astronomical rises reflecting … what? Captive customers? Whatever the traffic will bear?
What the heck is going on here? Does Schwarzenegger know about this? It must cost $100 to fill his Hummer. And Ralph “Unsafe at Any Speed” Nader is back on the campaign trail, so why isn’t he doing something about this daring daylight robbery?
Meanwhile, local writer Tom Sawyer has taken the bull by the horns, so to speak, and circulated an e-mail plan to force prices down by putting the squeeze on Exxon and Mobil (now merged into the nation’s first legally defensible same-sex marriage). The issue of that union is the largest oil company in the nation, if not the planet.
Anyway, here’s how the plan works. “For the rest of the year, starting as soon after March 1 as possible, don’t purchase any gasoline from Exxon-Mobil stations. If they’re not selling any gas, they’ll be inclined to reduce prices, then the other companies will have to follow suit,” Sawyer writes.
All we have to do to make this happen is forward this message to at least 10 people within a day of receipt. That’s it. If everyone does this, the word gets to 300 million people in about eight days. How’s that for power?
“We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Start with your next fill-up,” Sawyer says.
I received the message Feb. 22 and forwarded it to everyone whose e-mail address I know. I got several returns from those who had sneakily changed their servers for whatever reason, probably to ward off pests like me who expect them to actually do something.
The reason for the astonishing spike in California gas prices is a mystery to most of us ordinary folk; that old excuse about supply and demand doesn’t seem to apply this time. That is unless one counts this state’s illogical fondness for monster SUVs that inhale a gallon of high-test just to get from one station to the next. And our leaders’ reluctance to encourage, much less impose, any fuel efficiency standards on the Big Three.
As mysteries tend to spawn wild speculation, conspiracy theories abound. To wit: It’s a plot by defense attorneys to get Martha Stewart’s name off the front page of the business section before the jury has to come up with a verdict. It’s a plot to make the gay marriage debate go the way of gays in the military. Don’t ask, don’t tell didn’t work out swell but it got Clinton off the hook for a spell. It’s a plot by the CIA to get George Tenet’s name off the front page before someone has to explain why the White House reportedly demanded, and received daily, unvetted intelligence reports to bolster its push to war with Iraq.
My favorite is a theory that the big oil companies (major pals of the Bushies) conspired to jack up prices now so people will have something to grouse about besides jobs, healthcare, Iraq, the WMD mirage, bazillion dollar deficits, Social Security and the systematic degradation of our environment. Then, the theory goes, George W. can come in with a grandstand ploy to appear to force the oil companies to lower prices just in time for the November elections. How diabolical is that? Well, it would be easier than balancing the budget and producing WMDs or parsing words like building, gathering, impending, looming, threatening, which Roget’s finds synonymous with imminent, but what did he know?
After all, there’s a grand old tradition in this country that supports price gouging of gasoline buyers (both military and civilian).
Can you say Haliburton?