Drivers are getting their fill

LOS ANGELES — At a time when it’s costing him $40 to fill up and keep his aging maroon Mercury Sable on the road, Brian Graves has learned to drive with financial defensiveness, keeping one eye on the highway and the other on prices posted in front of the gas stations.

“I know that this station is cheaper than the one down the street, consistently,” the 30-year-old handyman said this week as he filled his tank at a Shell station east of downtown Los Angeles.

Indeed, the nearby Union 76 station was charging a nickel a gallon more than the $3.17 Graves paid for regular grade gasoline. About four miles away on the same street, the price was 28 cents a gallon higher.

With prices now above $3 a gallon across much of the country, few things are more exasperating than filling up at one station, only to learn you could have saved two or three or four bucks down the road.

The search for cheap gas has spawned a growing number of Web sites such as gasbuddy.com and gaspricewatch.com that list prices at stations nationwide. The information is supplied by Internet users who see their efforts as a public service and a blow against oil firms.

If gas is gas, how can prices vary so much? Like so many of life’s most vexing questions, there are no easy answers.

Industry officials say retailers who deal in large volumes can cut their prices a bit, while those who take credit cards or pay higher rent and other overhead must charge a little more.

“A small station that closes at night, for example, needs more pennies per gallon to cover its costs and make a profit because its volume would be lower than a 24-hour convenience store that is open all night to motorists,” said industry analyst Trilby Lunderberg whose Lundberg Survey tracks the price of gas at 7,000 stations nationwide.

During periods when prices go up every day, it’s not unusual for a station on one corner to have prices that on at least one day are several cents higher or lower than a competitor across the street or on the next block, industry officials say.

“It’s all related to how recently you got your shipment,” said Jeff Lenard, a spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores. “Retailers base prices on replacement costs.”

Over time, he said, prices should even out.

“But consumers don’t see it that way,” Lenard acknowledged. “The reality is that people watching the store all day to see prices go up are not watching all day when prices go down.”

No statistics are kept on the number of stations owned by major oil companies, Lundberg said.

Lenard said gas stations that include convenience stores account for about 75 percent of domestic gasoline sales. Only about 3 percent of those are owned by oil companies, he added.

For example, Chevron Corp. spokeswoman Stephanie Price said only about 5 percent of Chevron’s stations are owned and operated by the company with the rest run by independents. The price at all stations, she said, is largely driven by market forces and supply and demand, adding, “If you have stations clustered in a busy area they are going to price more competitively.”

With analysts saying the current spike isn’t likely to subside until sometime next month, drivers from Massachusetts to California are resorting to cost-cutting methods, including price shopping, driving less and taking public transportation. And most all of them seem to be complaining about the price of gas.

Brandon Johnson of Chicago, Michelle DeFurio of Springfield, Mass., and Maria Parra of Northglenn, Colo., accuse the big oil companies of charging all the public will bear.

“Price gouging,” DeFurio said as she filled up her SUV at a Massachusetts Sunoco station. “I don’t know what the hell else could be going on.”

Johnson, 34, called for a consumer boycott as he gassed up his SUV at a BP station in downtown Chicago charging $3.09 a gallon. “We should just all boycott gas for a day, just for one day, that would send a message,” he said.

Parra, 23, recently traded in her SUV for a more economical Saturn and looks for smaller, independent stations to save a few pennies. “I try to stop where I see the lowest prices,” she said. “Even if I have to drive a little ways, I always go to the place where it’s lowest.”