>Baker City Herald | Baker County Oregon's News Leader

Gas station workers say plummeting prices have made a difference in customers’ attitudes and refilling habits

Gary Page, who pumps gas at the A-Frame station at Oregon Trail West RV Park just north of Baker City, said business has increased since gas prices started plummeting earlier this fall. (Baker City Herald/Ed Merriman)

“People griped quite a bit when gas was $4 a gallon in the summertime,” said Gary Page, who pumps gas evenings and weekends at the station known as the A-Frame, at Oregon Trail West RV park near the freeway north of Hughes Lane.

“Gas sales were down because a lot of people chose to stay home rather than pay the high prices,” Page said.

When prices topped $4 a gallon, Page said RV customers from Portland and other areas cancelled their reservations at the RV park, citing the high gas prices.

When gas prices were at their peak, Page said some local drivers topped off their tanks before they hit the half-full mark because they were concerned about a possible gas shortage.

But now that prices are plummeting, he said, more drivers are putting off a visit to the pump in hopes that prices will fall even more.

Sharon Good, the weekend supervisor at the A-Frame station, operates the till and waits on customers who often comment on the falling gas prices.

“We hear all kinds of good comments about the lower gas prices,” Good said. “People are happy the prices are coming down. A lot of people say, ‘It’s about time.’ They also ask us if it is going to stay down, which we don’t know.”

“We never know from one day to the next whether the gas price is going to be higher or lower,” Good said. “Gas is delivered here every other day, except on weekends, and they don’t tell us what it’s going to cost until they deliver it.”

Fuel customer Ed Busciglio Sr. of Baker City said Sunday that he likes the lower gas prices because at age 83 it means he can afford to go fishing more often.

“Almost all the driving I do is to go fishing. I didn’t do that as much when the gas was so high,” Busciglio said.

He finds it curious that gas prices remained high until the final weeks before the Nov. 4 election, when politicians and others started talking about development of natural gas, wind, solar, hydrogen and other alternative fuels as a priority.

While the A-Frame station has a reputation for low prices, the cheapest gas available Sunday was at the downtown Chevron station at the corner of Main and Auburn, where regular unleaded was going for $2.34 a gallon.

Chevron customer Bruce Attwater said he thinks gas prices are still too high despite a drop of nearly 40 cents a gallon since the election, when prices around Baker City ranged from $2.74 to $2.79 a gallon for regular unleaded.

In addition to talking about gas prices, attendants and fuel customers at Baker-area stations tend to weave a little politics into their comments about why gas prices soared during the last half of 2007 and first half of 2008 to record highs, then dove to a two-year low in the six weeks leading up to the election.

Crude oil prices hit a peak of $145 in July, but by Saturday had dropped back down to $56 a barrel, according to a report in the International Herald, which tracks crude oil prices.

That rise and fall is the sharpest since the 1973 oil crisis that began when OPEC announced an oil embargo in response to a decision by the Nixon administration to re-supply the Israeli military during the Yom Kippur war.

“The 1973 oil price shock, along with the 1973-74 stock market crash, have been regarded as the first event since the Great Depression to have a persistent economic effect,” according to a historical account in the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, which reported a similar spike in gas prices prior to and during the 1980 and 1981 national recessions.

“I think the OPEC nations have so much money and power that they can jack prices up whenever they want, and there’s not much we can do about it,” Attwater said.

When gas prices topped $4 a gallon, politicians, environmental activists and even oil magnate T. Boone Pickens promoted alternative energy sources to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

But Attwater believes that before that movement could really take hold, OPEC pulled the plug on crude oil prices, taking the steam out of the alternative fuel campaign.

“After a few weeks of $4 gas, people got used to paying more, so at $2.34, the price looks pretty good to people, but I think it’s still higher than it ought to be,” Attwater said.

Pat Blair, an attendant at the Stump Dodger Shell station on Baker City’s south end, also hears his share of political comments mixed with opinions about gas prices, which were posted at $2.39 at the station Sunday.

“People are pretty happy the price has come down,” Blair said. “Gas sales have been getting better since the price has been coming down.”

Blair said some customers question why the record increase in gas prices earlier this year coincided with the runup to the presidential election.

“A lot of people think it might have had something to do with politics,” Blair said.

Blair, 29, who moved here six years ago from San Diego, said he’s also seen reports alleging both President Bush on one hand or President-elect Barack Obama on the other hand had ties to Arabian leaders, but unlike some Internet bloggers who think the gas price runup may have been political, he thinks it was more likely based on greed than international politics.

 “I hear a lot of different opinions from people who stop for gas,” he said. “I don’t know what to believe.”

Blair, who works nights and weekends pumping gas in addition to his day job, said the bottom line is that the election is over, America will soon have a new president, gas prices are coming down, and he has work to do.

He goes out to serve two customers who have pulled up to the pumps.

Blair, who is working two jobs to make ends meet, hopes gas prices will keep dropping so he’ll have more money in his budget for Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas presents for his two daughters.