Rising Gas Price Is Fuel for Thought

www.newsday.com February 16, 2003 Eleven days ago, on a Wednesday, regular was a cool $1.65.9 a gallon at Pequa Getty on Hicksville Road in Massapequa. The next day it was $1.67.9 - and two days later, $1.69.9. By Monday, it was selling for $1.71.9. By tomorrow, who knows? Inside the office, Tom Lipera, who runs the franchised station, was talking about how he had no say in the matter - prices are set at the corporate level - and how he had no idea where it would end. "Customers used to come in and say, 'Prices aren't going to go up again, are they?'" he said. "Now, their reaction is 'We know it's going up. How much?'" How much, indeed? Just last week, oil prices set a new 26-month benchmark, the highest price ever for the month of February. A barrel of U.S. light crude, used to refine gasoline, reached $35.60, the highest since November 2000. That is about $5 less a barrel than it was before the start of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The average price for regular was $1.73.9 on Long Island. To think there once was a commercial where a kid and his girlfriend drove to a Gulf station and asked for a quarter's worth of Good Gulf. But while analysts blamed the rise on fears over oil supplies should war break out in the Middle East, the American Automobile Association announced it believes there is no legitimate reason for the price hikes - that it looked "uncomfortably close" to price gouging. As American Automobile Association spokesman Geoff Sundstrom said last week: "The fundamentals do not justify U.S. drivers paying the highest price on record for the month of February." Problem is, out on the street, we are. We are paying for it at the pump. Sometimes, several times a week. "Unbelievable," Ethel Bogdanowich of Amityville said as she topped her tank last Thursday morning at Pequa Getty. The damage? Try 5.815 gallons of regular - for $10. "I have to go to work, so I have to get gas. I don't have much of a choice. It's beyond ridiculous, these prices. Where is it going to end?" At another pump, Massapequa resident Maureen Zinkiewicz sat behind the wheel of her maroon Infiniti G35 as the station attendant filled her tank with regular. A sales representative for A.J. Bart & Son, a printing company in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, she has clients throughout the city - and drives a minimum of 70 miles a day. She was holding a $50 bill in her hand. Her car took 18.488 gallons. Her charge was $34. "I know everybody is thinking that there is going to be a war with Iraq - and that the prices are going up because of that," she said. "But, you also hear that isn't the reason. That there is no shortage. That the oil companies don't have to raise the prices as much as they are. ... All I know is I drive at least 70 miles a day. My husband drives at least 70 miles a day. I need the car. I need to get gas. So does he. We have no choice." Behind the counter at the Sunoco station on Montauk Highway and Bayview Avenue in Amityville, the manager, who is from Turkey and asked he be identified only as Okan, said the prices might be going up because of the oil crisis in Venezuela, because of the threat of war with Iraq - or simply because these are the prices the market will bear. Outside, his station had 87-octane regular selling for $1.77.9 a gallon, 89-octane for $1.89.9, 93-octane for $1.95.9 and its 94-octane gasoline, Sunoco Ultra, at an obscene $2.15.9. I wish they weren't so high," Kristin Dascole of Amityville said as she filled the tank on her black VW Jetta: 12.327 gallons, $21.93. "But, I'm not going to worry about it because there are so many more important things to be worried about now." Like the renewed threat of terrorist attacks on New York. Like possible war in the Middle East. "Like what's going on in the world," she said. For now, we all remain at the mercy of the pump prices. As long as we need to drive. Sure, we could take the train. Or a bus. Or ride a bike or walk. But, some of those alternatives will not get us where we need to go when we need to get there. And the bottom line is we are a car culture here on Long Island with about 2 million drivers. Our communities are arranged so we must drive. Still, despite the rising prices, veterans of the gas wars - guys like Lipera, who was pumping gas at a Mobil station in Rockaway Beach during the gas crisis of 1973 - said we shouldn't fear it will ever get that bad again. Where we had lines that ran on for blocks. Where we were only able to buy gasoline on odd or even days, depending on our license plate numbers. All the suppliers tell you there is plenty of gas in reserve, that the oil companies have more than they need," he said. "For years, that is all I've been hearing - and, I've never heard anything else." So, why do the big oil companies continue to raise the price of a gallon of gas then, he was asked. "I guess," he said, "because they can."