Self-serve gas mulled for rural Oregon

SALEM – Oregon is one of only two states where drivers aren’t allowed to pump their own gas, but lawmakers appear ready to allow people cruising through rural areas to serve themselves.

That would leave New Jersey as the last holdout with statewide restrictions. Oregon’s not ready to completely jettison its 64-year-old ban, but concerns that travelers could get stranded in places with few gas stations open in the middle of the night may bring self-service pumps to vast expanses of the state.

Parts of Oregon are so remote that people unfamiliar with the landscape don’t realize hundreds of miles separate gas stations, said Rep. Cliff Bentz, sponsor of a bill that would let gas stations offer self-service fuel when there isn’t an owner, operator or employee around.

Rural businesses in the middle of nowhere can’t afford to keep someone manning the pumps 24 hours a day, said Bentz, a Republican from Ontario, a city near the Idaho border.

“You go around Eastern Oregon counties, you find more and more situations where there isn’t any fuel. And it’s not unlike the situation electric-car owners find themselves in now,” Bentz said.

Bentz’s bill sailed through the House on a bipartisan 60-0 vote. It’s now awaiting a committee hearing in the Senate.

The measure is limited to counties where there are fewer than 40,000 residents. That accounts for half of Oregon’s counties and almost all of Eastern Oregon.

Oregonians have rebuffed every attempt to overturn the ban on self-service gas since it was instituted, including a ballot measure they rejected in 1982 that would have legalized self-service pumps. The opposition has been so strong that legislators haven’t introduced a measure to overturn the ban since 2003.

Bentz said owners and operators of rural gas stations asked him to introduce HB 3011 this year.