Gas Prices Soar : Station Customers Shrug and Pay

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 unfazed--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 Southern California continued to rise in the wake of the March 24 Alaskan oil spill, others echoed the Dominskis’ resignation.

In Orange County, service station employees contacted Saturday said the Alaskan situation has not caused any abnormal runs on their supplies of gas but that the shipwreck has spurred dramatic price increases.

“We haven’t had any problem with our supplies (of gasoline) yet. The price has been going up like crazy, though--10 cents in the last 5 days. There haven’t been any lines at our station, but Friday we did have abnormally high sales. We did at least 20% over what we normally do on a non-holiday Friday,” said Francisco Sanchez, a shop foreman at an El Toro Union 76 station.

In Los Angles County, Wilfred Malet, a businessman who was filling up his Volvo at a Unocal station in Silver Lake, said: “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.

In Buena Park, Dave Smith, a Chevron station employee, cast doubt on concerns over possible shortages.

“If you ask me, I think that it’s all a bunch of you-know-what. I don’t see how one tanker could mess up the whole supply system,” Smith said. “And, as far as I know, my station has not had any problems with supplies, and I don’t think that we are anticipating any.”

Echoing Smith was Christopher Avila, an attendant at a Dana Point Shell station.

“There haven’t been any lines of people buying gas when I’ve been working,” Avila said.

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.

“I expect the crunch to hit sometime next week. That’s when I think we are going to see our first supply problem. But we’ll just keep pumping gas until we run out, and after that we’ll have to just wait and see,” said George Gomez, an Anaheim Chevron state manager, adding that gas sales at his station late last week were brisk.

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 4 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.

Times staff writer Jeff Mitchell contributed to this story.