Motorists Chafing Under a Steady Rise in Gas Prices

Friday, March 5, 2004
By Nick Madigan

New York Times Writer

Jill P. Capuzzo contributed reporting from New Jersey for this article, and Ariel Hart from Atlanta, Ben Lefebvre from Detroit, Jo Napolitano from Chicago and Avi Salzman from New Haven

The increases are especially hard on independent truckers, for whom fuel costs are a large part of doing business. "It's been devastating," Larry Daniel, president of America's Independent Truckers Association, said from his office in Clinton, Miss. "If they're lucky, and if they're going downhill with a tail wind, some of these trucks get nine miles to the gallon."

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LOS ANGELES -- NYT
"This is killing me," Bob Sherwood, an electrician who spends a lot of time on the road, said on Friday at a Santa Monica gas station after paying $30 to pump 13 gallons of gasoline into his '71 GMC truck.

"I'm working two hours a day just to pay for the gas to get me to and from home," said Mr. Sherwood, who lives in Castaic, 38 miles north of downtown Los Angeles.

Motorists around the country appear similarly distraught at pump prices, which in many places have soared to record or near-record highs. The national average for regular unleaded gas on Friday was a fraction over $1.71, just below the record of $1.73 set on Aug. 30 last year and up 9.4 cents from a month ago. Some drivers and oil industry analysts see a potential for gas prices this summer to rise to $3.

"It'll probably drop off in late March or in April, but come summer we may see something else altogether," said Jeffrey Spring, a spokesman for the Automobile Club of Southern California.

In California as a whole, the average price of regular gas on Friday was almost $2.18, up marginally from the previous day, Mr. Spring said. California now has the highest gasoline prices in the nation.

Reasons for the increases include prices for crude oil, which sold for a high of $37.45 a barrel on Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Worldwide supply of crude appears to be tight, partly because O.P.E.C., the world's largest oil cartel, plans to cut production next month and because of political and industrial turbulence in Venezuela, a major provider of oil for the United States.

In addition, many refineries in the United States are changing over to production of so-called summer fuels, an expensive process in itself, and refinery operators say they are also having to pass on some of the increased costs of producing gasoline with newly mandated levels of oxygenates, primarily ethanol.

(More: NYTimes.com / National)

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Dan