Cost of gas affecting consumers

  ED RHEE Fifth-year study of religion student Eric
Wu pumps gas at the Westwood Chevron station last week.
Gas prices across the state have passed $2.

By Monique Simpson
Daily Bruin Reporter

As the price of a gallon of gasoline surpassed the $2 mark
Memorial Day weekend in Westwood and elsewhere around the country,
government officials said there is little they can do to stop the
price increase.

“Price control has been (eliminated) since the Reagan
years,” said Rob Schlichting, spokesman for California Energy
Commission, referring to former Gov. Ronald Reagan’s lift of
regulations on oil companies and the price they can charge.

Now the supply and demand market determines gas prices,
Schlichting said.

And with current prices peaking, many Californians were forced
to adjust their weekend plans accordingly.

Sean Adams, a UC Berkeley student, drove his mom’s Volvo
instead of his Ford Mustang down from Oakland to visit friends at
UCLA for the holiday.

“I haven’t been driving my own car (because of gases
prices),” said Adams.

He said the Volvo gets gas better mileage than the
Mustang’s 20 miles per gallon.

Though gas prices haven’t made Adams change his travel
plans yet, if prices continue to increase he may change his summer
plans.

And Adams is not alone.

According to a recent poll on the LosAngelesGasPrices.com, 41.7
percent of the 1,117 surveyed, said they will limit their driving
during the summer because of gas prices, while only 25.1 percent
said they would not change their summer vacation plans.

Second-year English student Vanessa Otero has already begun to
limit her driving.

In the past, she would drive home to San Diego often, but now
she hesitates to take the ride because of the high cost of filling
up her Jeep Cherokee.

“Before I would ask, “˜Do I want to go home?’
Now it’s, “˜Should I go home cause it’s going to
cost $35,'” said Otero, who opted to make the trip home
for Memorial Day.

In addition, Otero has recently had to cut back on her weekly
spending, such as not going to the car wash, because of the high
cost of gas.

“Who’s going to pay an extra $5 for a car wash when
gas is an extra $10,” she said.

To assist in finding the cheapest gas, some have turned to the
Internet. Instead of riding around town in search of the lowest
prices, people can now compare prices on Web sites like LosAngelesGasPrices.com.

Operated by the GasBuddy Organization, Inc., a non-profit
organization based in Canada, the site has a real-time gas price
forum that allows consumers to view and post prices of local gas
station. The site listed gas as low as $1.79 in Alhambra and as
high as $2.27 in Pasadena.

The California Energy Commission reported on May 22 that the
average cost of regular gasoline in California is $1.95 per gallon
““ a 16-cent increase for last year’s average. The
Energy Information Administration, the official energy statistic
from the U.S. government, put the national average for regular gas
at $1.69 per gallon on May 21, compared to $1.11 on May 25,
1998.

The higher cost of gas on the West Coast was the topic of a
Senate subcommittee hearing April 25.

At the meeting, John Cook, Petroleum Division Director in the
Office of Oil and Gas, attributed the more expensive price to
geographical isolation, environmental regulations imposed by the
California Air Resource Board, and the state’s high gas
consumption rate.

Schlichting agreed with these reasons and said that each day
Californians use 42 million gallons of gasoline ““ and the
number is rising.

“The only people who use more gas than us is the rest of
the country,” he said. “We’re the second largest
market in the world.”

But if consumers take the inflation rate into consideration,
they will find that they have paid more for gas in the past,
according to Schlichting.

“In 1981 gas was $1.35 for a gallon, but in today’s
dollars that’s like $2.45,” he said.

But for some consumers, the current price is still
expensive.

Art Irineo, who has been a cashier at the Shell gas station at
the corner of Gayley and Le Conte Avenues for three years, said
many customers express frustration at the cost of gas.

But Irineo said even though customers complain to him,
controlling gas prices is out of his hands.

He alters the prices when he receives a call from the owner of
the station instructing him to change the price because of
increases in Shell’s selling prices.

“There’s nothing I can do, I’m in the same
boat as (the customers),” he said.