Gas Prices Take a Jump at the Pump as Drivers Fume

Gasoline prices are soaring in Orange County and the surrounding region, hitting their highest levels since the Gulf War and crimping the sense of freedom Southern Californians normally feel at the start of a sunny spring weekend.

“It’s getting to be a joke,” said Marc Fertig, who flinched when he saw the price of a Friday afternoon fill-up at his regular Chevron station ($1.61 for a gallon of regular unleaded), just across the street from John Wayne Airport.

Since mid-February, gas prices have been rising steadily in California, reaching an average price of $1.40 per unleaded gallon not long ago, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California.

But a second, harder spike came Monday when at least two oil companies boosted wholesale prices by 9 cents a gallon, causing an overnight increase that has many consumers pumping their fists at the pumps.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Bill LaPlante, who commutes from Balboa Island to Los Angeles every day, a fixed weekly expense he’s suddenly watching go up and up and up.

Like many consumers, LaPlante doesn’t believe all the talk about external factors driving prices up. He suspects that certain powerful people are trying to determine what the market will bear, knowing full well that citizens like himself are captives of their cars.

“It’s all about marketing,” said Pat Papaccio, who wasn’t happy about spending $26.79 to fill up his Mercedes 300E at the Corona del Mar Chevron. “It’s about seeing what the market can bear.”

“I think it’s absolutely outrageous that we can’t keep our gas prices in line with the rest of the U.S.,” customer Stephen Krupnick said as he filled his Porsche.

“I can’t even patronize my own gas station,” grumbled Chevron attendant Ken Firmin in Irvine. “It’s too expensive.”

Get used to it, industry experts say.

Though this week’s high prices are expected to float downward eventually, at least part of the increase is permanent.

“Gas prices have been artificially suppressed for a long time,” said Dennis DeCota, executive director of the California Service Station and Repair Assn. “It’s important consumers realize that.”

Gas prices are on the rise throughout the world because of a dramatic jump in the price of crude oil. Like so many economic events, the jump is a byproduct of politics: Oil producers have been shaving their inventories to avoid getting stuck with an oversupply if the ban on Iraqi oil exports is suddenly lifted.

But prices are especially high in California--about 13% above the national average as of Monday--for a variety of reasons, including fires and equipment snafus at regional refineries.

Those snafus, which temporarily halted production at Shell Oil’s refinery in Martinez and Arco’s in Southern California, coincided with the introduction of a new state-mandated fuel, which is supposed to do for area skies what attendants once did for your dingy windshield.

First, oil companies spent more than $4 billion to retrofit refineries for production of the new environmentally friendly gas.

Then the refineries shut down. Suddenly, the new gas was in short supply because out-of-state refineries don’t usually make it. Wholesalers were ordered to switch to the new gas Monday, and the result was pandemonium, as suppliers scrambled to buy up dwindling supplies.

“Everything had positioned itself for this spike,” DeCota said.

While industry experts expected price increases of 5 to 15 cents a gallon as a result of the new gas, “there was never expected to be a fuel supply problem,” said Daven Oswalt, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, which has asked oil companies to attend a hearing Thursday to explain the price leap.

To assuage consumer anger, some gas stations are handing out pamphlets that explain the value of clean-burning fuel and discuss the chain of circumstances that led to the higher prices.

But many customers aren’t in a pamphlet kind of mood.

“My poor crew out there,” said Ken Carey, owner of Laguna Chevron on Pacific Coast Highway. “They’re getting their ears filled, they’re getting chewed out.”

Throughout the week, Carey and others say, customers have been fuming at their local gas station attendants, who have as much to do with the price increase as a weatherman does with the falling rain.

The really angry customers demand to speak to the owner.

“You can sit here and tell them all day long that we don’t know any more than they do,” said Carey, cupping a cigarette in his oil-stained hand. “But what the customer wants to hear is that I went out and bought a big brand new car or that I’ve gone on a great vacation. That’s what they want to hear. They think I’m making a fortune.”

Though Carey has bumped his price to $1.53 a gallon for regular unleaded, he says flatly: “We didn’t make a penny off this increase.”

Yes, most gasoline retailers set their own prices. But they are subject to wholesale prices fixed by the oil companies. Until recently, many California service stations were keeping their prices artificially low and taking a hit on their own profits to stay competitive, according to DeCota, of the gas station association.

Gas station owners typically feel pressure to keep their prices low because they pay rent to oil companies based on the volume of gas they sell. But the greater pressure these days has been to pass the price increase on to the consumer.

Oil companies, meanwhile, insist they’re not the gleeful gougers everyone believes.

“We don’t like this disruption to the market anymore than anyone else,” said Dennis Lamb, Unocal’s general manager of fuel planning and technology. “This is the kind of thing we don’t need when we are trying to introduce a new product.”

Back at the pumps, Bill LaPlante was loading his kids back into his refueled Jeep Grand Cherokee, $34.02 poorer.

But before they would consent to being strapped into their car seats, Kayla and Matthew and Ryan and Allen LaPlante were disputing who would get the privilege of replacing the gas cap.

LaPlante quickly mediated the dispute, then put the gas nozzle back on its holder.

You see, he sighed, sounding the theme for the day, and perhaps for many days to come:

“Life is a series of compromises.”

Times staff writers Jill Leovy, Ealena Callender and Kenneth Chang contributed to this report.