Idaho Panel To Examine Gas Prices Self-Service Rates Are Highest In The Country

Idahoans filling up their gas tanks shouldn’t be paying 21 cents a gallon above the national average, members of Attorney General Al Lance’s new task force on gasoline prices said Wednesday.

“There are some things we’d like to get to the bottom of,” said former Attorney General Jim Jones, the group’s chairman.

A decade ago, Jones shamed the gasoline industry across Idaho into stopping its practice of charging more for unleaded gas than leaded.

“When I raised a fuss about it, it actually did stop,” he recalled. “I pointed out there wasn’t any reason for that.”

Back then, both types of fuel actually cost suppliers the same amount.

But this time, the state’s job may be tougher. Idaho’s self-service gas prices are the highest in the nation, according to the American Automobile Association, and retailers and local wholesalers are reporting very slim profit margins.

“If something is going on at the local level and it maybe shouldn’t be, you can raise a big fuss about it and sometimes that helps,” Jones said. “From what I’ve seen so far, I’m not sure that would work here. It seems like the place where the problem is is the major oil company suppliers.”

Idaho gets much of its fuel through pipelines that enter the state from Montana and Utah. But other states served by the same pipelines are reporting lower prices at the pump.

At the same time, Jones said, “the retailers and wholesalers here in Idaho are not particularly cutting a fat hog.”

Jones plans to contact the pipeline operators for some answers. “It’s our intention to look at the entire state,” he said.

According to Dave Carlson of AAA, Idaho’s self-serve unleaded price hit $1.49 in the automobile association’s last survey, on Sept. 23.

Washington was at $1.46, and Montana at $1.37.

Fuel taxes don’t explain the difference. Idaho’s state fuel tax is 25 cents a gallon. Washington’s is 23 cents, and Montana’s is 27 cents.

The only state whose gas prices were higher than Idaho’s was Oregon, at $1.54, but it doesn’t allow self-serve gas sales.

So why do Idahoans pay more at the pump? “That’s the million-dollar question of the day,” Carlson said.

Jones said if there are big disparities in price as the pipelines cross state lines, “Then I think we’re entitled to some explanation. We can point our finger in the right direction and maybe get the Federal Trade Commission to get off their duff.”

Committee member Brent Kerbs, a fuel retailer from Burley, said he recently bought a shipment of gas from a Portland distributor more than 20 cents cheaper than he could have purchased it in Salt Lake City at the same time. Even with the higher cost of trucking the gas from Portland, Kerbs said he still came out ahead.

Employees at gas stations like his regularly receive verbal abuse from customers upset by high pump prices.

“They don’t make enough money to sit in there and be called the names they get called,” Kerbs said.

The six-member committee agreed information should be gathered on: gas price investigations by the federal government, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and other states; the impact of oil company mergers in recent years; and differences in gas prices between areas of Idaho. North Idaho typically has prices right around the state average, Carlson said. In AAA’s Labor Day statewide fuel price survey, North Idaho was at $1.46 a gallon, identical to the state average. Boise was at $1.48.

Carlson said Idaho typically runs 8 to 10 cents higher per gallon than the national average, but when the figure hit 21 cents in September, “that raised the red flag.”

Just a year ago, Idaho’s average gas price was under a dollar a gallon. Jones said another question the group plans to examine is why North Idaho wholesalers who buy gasoline in Washington have to pay that state’s hazardous substance tax, and how that affects prices in Idaho. Jones gained a reputation during his two terms as attorney general in the 1980s as a gas price watchdog. Jaw-boning with the oil industry and threats of investigations into price fixing and collusion repeatedly succeeded in keeping prices in check.

Jones also won several criminal convictions in one collusion case involving Pocatello gas retailers.

He expects the panel to have two or three more meetings and to be ready with its recommendations to the attorney general by Dec. 10.

Lance, in giving the committee its charge on Wednesday, urged members to examine whether Idaho’s consumer protection and antitrust laws should be reviewed to give officials more leverage. And he added a personal appeal for lower prices at the pump.

“If you can get it down under a dollar a gallon, my wife would sure appreciate it,” he said.

Graphic: Pricey gas in Idaho

The Associated Press contributed to this report.