Re: Fuel Prices

[TEX <tex@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>]

Maybe the new Segway has a snow tire model, and we will all be saved:

http://www.segway.com.edgesuite.net/consumer/home_flash.html


Clint "Tex" Payton
email: tex@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu

On Wed, 5 Dec 2001 WMSteed@aol.com wrote:

> On page 4A of the Dec. 3 issue of Moscow-Pullman Daily News was an AP article
> entitled "Gas station owners say they have little control over gas prices."
> It should be required reading for all of us who have fumed for decades over
> gasoline prices in Moscow.
>
> It follows a story I first saw in USA Today last summer.  Although talking
> about Seattle, it stated gas prices in parts of the West are set by zones due
> to a lack of competition among suppliers and gas stations.  The companies
> that refine the oil also transport it, distribute it and sell it, either
> themselves or through others.  It said Washington's four suppliers keep
> independent distributors from selling the cheaper gas inside King, Pierce and
> Snohomish counties.  The suppliers sell under the names Arco, Shell, Texaco,
> Chevron, 76 and now Tesoro.  Gas stations are charged varying prices for gas
> under a computerized "zone pricing" system.  Oil companies do not disclose
> detail about how prices are set by the system but it can result in  different
> prices at nearby stations.  I believe this is what is happening in Moscow as
> it would explain the difference between, for example, Moscow and Lewiston.  I
> paid $1.19 yesterday in the Valley and saw $1.31 when I got to Moscow.
> Moscow has two prices with a large group of stations all at one price and a
> couple of stations a penny lower.  Remarkedly, this never changes, year in
> and year out.
>
> The article goes on to say higher gas prices are caused by the major oil
> companies who restrict access to gasoline and then use zone pricing to
> maintain the highest possible prices at each location.  Some of you may
> remember a story several years ago that Go Further Gas at Mountainview and
> White Ave. had their supply pulled for selling at too low a price per gallon.
>  The article concludes, unfortunately, with the information that the courts
> have backed the zone pricing practice and in May the FTC closed a three year
> investigation of zone pricing in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and
> Arizona after determining that large oil suppliers had broken no antitrust
> laws.
>
> What really amazes me is that local stations continue to give out the party
> line that the high prices are due to "only having nine months of students
> requires higher prices to make a profit, that it is due to high local taxes
> or that we are not on a major highway."  Apparently the oil companies have a
> strangle-hold not only on the price at the pump but on information as well.
>
> Walter Steed
>