Gasoline Users Shrug and Pay as Prices Soar

It might be said that Richard and Helen Dominski got a bargain Saturday morning.

As the Dominskis pumped their own gas at the United station at Alameda Avenue and Victory Boulevard in Burbank, station manager Milt Pacheco was on a ladder, changing the prices on his sign.

The prices weren’t going down. As of 10:30 a.m. Saturday, a gallon of unleaded gas at the station cost $1.169. The Dominskis, who pulled in just before the increase took effect, paid $1.099. But their savings left them nonplussed--last week they paid less, and they expect that next week they’ll pay more.

‘You Have to Pay’

“What other choice do you have?” Helen Dominski asked, shrugging her shoulders. “You have to pay the price.”

As gas prices in the Los Angeles area continued to rise in the wake of the March 24 Alaskan oil spill, other consumers echoed the Dominskis’ resignation.

Wilfred Malet, a businessman who was filling up his Volvo at a Unocal station in Silver Lake, remarked: “I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can do about it. In Los Angeles, you have no choice.”

There were few long lines at gas stations Saturday and no signs of panic buying, despite predictions by some energy experts that the possibility of a shortage could prompt motorists to hoard gasoline.

Yet tension was high among station operators, some of whom said they fear that their prices will not remain competitive and that supplies will dwindle if freighter traffic out of Valdez, Alaska, remains slow.

Rekha Desai fears she will be caught in that crunch. A math teacher at Virgil Junior High School, she is spending her vacation managing her husband’s Arco station while he is in India visiting his mother.

Desai said her most recent gasoline shipment was delivered four hours late, and that an Arco representative told her the company could run out of gas. Meanwhile, she is well aware of her competition--there are service stations on all four corners of the intersection at Alvarado and Temple streets.

Desai’s Saturday prices, which ranged from $.959 a gallon for regular to $1.179 for super unleaded, were the lowest of the four. She said she and her husband prefer to keep their prices low and earn their money by doing a volume business. Their station reflects that philosophy; at noontime Saturday, nearly a dozen cars were lined up to buy gas there, while the Exxon station across the street was virtually empty.

Nevertheless, Desai said, she has raised her prices “three times in three days. I’m compelled to, because if I keep on going this way, I might end up negative in the long run.”

Independent stations are being hit particularly hard, said Ron Appel, owner of the United Oil Co., which operates 26 service stations, including the United in Burbank. Appel says he has enough gas to keep his pumps full through today, but he worries what will happen Monday.

Prices on the Rise

“It’s getting to look like a real tight supply situation,” he said. “I’m not saying that there’s going to be lines. I’m saying that it’s going to get expensive.”

Said the operator of one Hollywood station, who declined to give his name: “It’s completely out of control. They’re going up like mad.”

With that, he asked one of his employees to change the station’s signs to reflect yet another 2-cent price increase. “In this world, you have to keep up with the Joneses,” he explained. “Otherwise, you go out of business.”

This particular operator blamed the major oil companies for capitalizing on the worst oil spill in U.S. history, using it as a phony excuse to make more money.

The oil companies, however, have said there are several reasons for the price hikes, some of them unrelated to the oil spill. There has been a steady increase in world crude oil prices since November, combined with a strong demand for gasoline in the United States and the Far East. In addition, refiners have cited environmental regulations that make it more expensive to process crude oil.

Some consumers, however, were skeptical.

“I think we’re getting gouged,” said Robert Allen, a San Fernando Valley advertising man who drives a gold Cadillac convertible. “I think they made a big deal out of nothing.”