Filled your gas tank lately? The average retail price of gasoline in the Tampa Bay area hit a record high earlier this week. Then it broke that record on Wednesday.
On Thursday, metro area gas prices hit another high of $1.714 per gallon, the same day that Florida's statewide average price for gas hit its own record of $1.747. Those are the highest average prices since AAA started tracking daily gas prices in the late 1970s.
Go ahead. Top off your tank. Gas prices are still heading up. Experts see little to keep the price from rising even higher. And Florida wants to know why.
If this all sounds familiar, Florida - along with the rest of the country - suffered a similar spike in gas prices about this same time last year. It was serious enough then to prompt Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist to ask oil company representatives to come to Tallahassee and explain the surging prices.
Their 2003 explanation? The threat of war with Iraq, a two-month strike in Venezuela and a cold winter were driving world gas prices up.
One year later and prices are even higher. That's why Crist this week renewed his invitation to the executives of seven major oil companies: ExxonMobil, BP, Marathon, Hess, Chevron-Texaco, Conoco-Phillips and Shell. Crist wants them to show up next Thursday in Tallahassee to freshen their excuses - I mean explanations - for spiraling gas prices.
Crist already knows most of what the oil chieftains will say. Things are still uncertain in Iraq. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) plans to cut crude oil production about 10 percent by April 1. It was a cold winter (again). A supply boat sank in the Mississippi River, upsetting gas deliveries and hurting supplies.
Come on guys, Crist wants to tell the oil executives. You run some of the biggest businesses on the planet. Can't you plan ahead and anticipate these same old reasons without driving gas prices sky-high?
"After a while, you can't help but be skeptical of these excuses," Crist said Thursday. "People deserve to know the real reasons."
Not that Crist is alone. He has been talking regularly with other state attorneys general about gas prices. Starting Sunday, Crist will attend the annual meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General in Washington. Gas prices are scheduled to be a Tuesday morning topic for discussion.
Crist's office is still investigating the run-up in gas prices. The publicity conscious Crist appeared on ABC-TV's Good Morning America on Wednesday to note how gas station prices seem to move in lockstep.
"When you see prices go up virtually simultaneously and in almost the exact same amount, you have to wonder about collusion and antitrust issues," Crist said. If strong evidence can be found, a lawsuit against the big oil companies is not out of the question.
Is Big Oil really under pressure and forced to raise gas prices? Or is it crying in its riches? Consider the past year at the seven corporations invited to Tallahassee next week:
- One year ago, ExxonMobil shares traded under $34. Now they trade over $42, a 23 percent gain.
- BP shares traded last March under $37, and now trade over $49. That's up nearly a third.
- Marathon traded last March near $22 per share. Now its stock is over $34, up 54 percent.
- Hess shares hovered near $41 a year ago and now trade above $64, a 56 percent gain.
- Chevron-Texaco, at $62 a share last March, now trades over $88. That's an increase of 42 percent.
- Conoco-Phillips shares traded near $49 and now approach $69, a 40 percent bump.
- And Shell has climbed from near $32 to $41 in the past year, up 28 percent.
Yes, I know the stock market rebounded nicely last year. But these are not companies that seem to be hurting and in need of record-breaking price increases at the retail pump.
Consumer groups such as Public Citizen complain that consolidation among oil companies is making it easier for the industry to dictate prices. Five companies - ExxonMobil, Chevron-Texaco, Conoco-Phillips, BP and Shell - now control half of this country's domestic oil production, half of all domestic refinery capacity and almost two-thirds of the retail market.
So far, gas prices topping $1.70 a gallon may be painful. But higher costs are not discouraging many drivers from hopping in their vehicles.
The Tampa Bay tourist industry, which gets about half its customers from people who drive here, is carefully monitoring the escalating gas prices. The best guess here is that traveling consumers won't really change their driving habits unless the price for regular gas tops $2 a gallon.
But even then, tourist officials don't envision too many families changing vacation plans just because the cost of driving here from the Midwest rises by another $20 or $30.
"What would concern us is a gasoline shortage," Russ Kimball, general manager of the Sheraton Sand Key Resort in Clearwater, told St. Petersburg Times business reporter Mark Albright earlier this week.
Here's a silver lining, of sorts. Gas prices are highest in California, where on Thursday they averaged $2.172 per gallon. Gas is least expensive on the Gulf Coast.
Somehow that does not make it feel any cheaper when the gas gauge hits E.
