Tennesseans fear gas will keep creeping up
miva.jacksonsun.com By DENNIS SEID dseid@jacksonsun.com Mar 22 2003
Christy Powers drives roughly 100 miles daily between her home in Milan and her job in Lexington. So when it's time to put gas in her Dodge Stratus, she's looking for the best deal she can find.
Most of the time, she purchases her regular unleaded fuel in Lexington, which can be 6 to 8 cents cheaper a gallon than her hometown. With the war in Iraq getting under way, she fears those savings might soon disappear.
"I think we'll have to worry about a shortage, and everything will go up," she said.
No long lines of customers have flooded area gas stations.
In fact, it's pretty much business as usual, said Richard Jacobs. His company, River Oil Co., distributes gas to stations around West Tennessee, including his own Phillips 66 stations.
And when he went to his office Thursday morning, he was hit with another pleasant surprise.
"My jaw nearly hit the floor," Jacobs said. "We actually got a price decrease. It wasn't big, about 1 cents, but it was still a drop."
The average price for regular unleaded gas Friday in the United States was $1.70, while the average in Tennessee was $1.62, according to the Automobile Association of America.
Jacobs thinks the start of the war removed a great deal of uncertainty, and helped stabilize the market - if only briefly. The markets become volatile when people aren't sure what is happening.
Now that war has officially begun, everybody can relax a little.
"Strange, isn't it?" he replied. But Jacobs also warned that "we'll still see some volatility."
Janice Mealer drives a 2001 Dodge Ram - a six-cylinder, she emphasized.
"The guys driving the V-8s are really hurting," she said. "I put $20 worth of gas in my truck yesterday, and it didn't even fill it halfway."
She, too, thinks gas prices will creep upward, much like they have done in recent weeks.
"If it does, I'm going to start walking to work," she said.
Ashley Woods knows her pain. Her husband drives a 1994 Chevy Silverado, and $50 a week on gas is barely enough to keep it running. Ashley drives a Pontiac Sunbird, which should get better mileage.
"It should, but I drive like a bat out of hell," she said.
The Woodses live on a farm outside of Lexington, and so they have to buy gas for the tractors and 4-wheelers. It all adds up rather quickly.
"It can get pretty ridiculous," she said.
As for the Iraqi war forcing gas prices to go up, she has no doubt that will happen.
"But it will eventually get better and go back down," she said. "I hope."
Venezuela, after going through an oil workers' strike a couple months ago, is revving its oil production.
And OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) has promised to take care of any supply shortages caused by the Iraqi war.
Jacobs also said President Bush would likely open the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserves if the situation reached a point that fuel prices kept climbing. That would provide approximately 6-8 months worth of oil and gas.
"If necessary, he'll open the spigot," Jacobs said
- Dennis Seid, dseid@jacksonsun.com, 425-9644