Crude Figures

Humboldt’s soaring gas prices are putting the bust back into combustion

(June 12, 2008) Last Wednesday Shelly O’Brien climbed up a rickety old ladder in front of her one-pump, two-nozzle gas station on Myrtle Avenue in Eureka and raised the price of regular unleaded 14 cents to $4.52 per gallon. “Maybe one of these days I’ll be rich enough I can buy myself a new ladder,” O’Brien joked on her way down. Then, after chewing on the thought for a moment, she said, “Probably not anytime soon.” Switching out the scratched number plates is becoming an all-too frequent occurrence at Indianola Market.

With the nation’s skyrocketing gas prices, businesses in general and Humboldt’s in particular — where gas prices are often among the country’s highest — are feeling the crunch. O’Brien tells me that there’s no profit in gas anymore. She continues to run her pump anyway to draw customers into her shop to buy one of her famous hot dogs. But even the hot dogs are more expensive now. She pays an extra $6 in surcharges to cover the transportation costs from Oregon.

GALLERY >

Back behind the counter inside the store, O’Brien checks Yahoo! Finance on her laptop regularly for changes in the oil market, and she says she calls Renner Petroleum — the local company that supplies her with gasoline — at least three times a day for price updates.

But gas station owners aren’t the only people suffering: Local ranchers, farmers, manufacturers, ambulance companies, county government and schools are also trying to figure out ways to cope with the rising price of fuel.

Even companies like Renner Petroleum, which supplies O’Brien with gasoline, say they aren’t profiting from their increasingly lucrative product. The profits are all going back to oil producers. The middlemen — the Bay Area refineries and the local distributors — end up having to absorb the price hikes, company president Mike Renner told the Journal recently.

The effect of high gas prices on his company’s profit margins is compounded by the fact that local fuel consumption is down 12-14 percent, Renner said. “The era of easy oil is over,” he lamented. In the future, family-run companies like his will have to change to meet the times.

A call for change seems to be a common reaction to rising gas prices. Doug Fini, who manages Humboldt County’s motor pool, is hoping to add at least 12 more hybrid vehicles to the county’s fleet next year, with 11 already on the road. That’s because Fini expects the county’s fuel budget — for its 350 vehicles — to be a whopping $300,000 over budget come July.

School districts are faced with a similar problem because of their fleet of gas-guzzling school buses. Dan Pires, Director of Transportation for Eureka City Schools, said last week that he expects to be $15,000 over budget this year. That’s how much it costs to keep a school library open four hours a day for an entire school year, Pires said. In the short term the district’s strategy will be to reduce busing and in the long term to update its fleet. Older school buses on the road now get about 3 miles per gallon, he said. The newer high-tech diesel buses get about 8 mpg. It isn’t a panacea, but it will help reduce costs. And, “it’s not all bad,” he pointed out — with fewer buses, more students will end up walking to school.

1 2 3 NEXT PAGE >SHARE