Looks like another stupid design flaw due to lack of foresight... some gas pumps are not capable of going to the $2.00 digit. They are starting to sell gas by the half gallon to accomodate for this "D2 Bug" (Dollar Two).

Midwest Motorists Seethe at Gasoline Supply Crisis

By Richard Valdmanis

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Midwest drivers are suffering the highest gasoline pump prices in the nation, bearing the brunt of a shock U.S. supply crunch that has consumer groups, the oil industry, and environmental regulators wrestling with each other for answers.

Midwest gasoline prices have shot well above the record-high national average of $1.57 a gallon, with drivers shelling out around $1.75 in Wisconsin and even breaching the all-important two dollar a gallon mark in Illinois, the American Automobile Association (AAA) reported.

The unprecedented price spike is forcing Midwest motorists to drive far and wide in search of less expensive fuel, while some service stations which can't make their pump signs show a price over $1.99 have taken to selling gasoline by the half gallon as a quick fix.

Consumer advocates, the energy industry, and environmental regulators seem unable to find common ground to ease the situation.

``There doesn't seem to be any good reason why consumers here should have to pay more for their clean air than people elsewhere,'' said Robert Bartlett, director of the Petroleum Marketers Association of Wisconsin (PMAW). ``It's a problem with no easy solution. We're still looking for one.''

Collision Of Circumstances

The pump price spike is blamed on low spare supplies of gasoline, due partly to tough new fuel standards handed down June 1 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), high crude oil prices of around $30 a barrel, and a spate of pipeline disruptions affecting supply flow to the heartland as the summer driving season hits top speed.

Wisconsin and other states hard hit by the gasoline spike are trying everything to relieve the strain.

In late May, just days ahead of the EPA's roll-out of new clean-air gasoline standards at a third of the nation's pumps, the PMAW and the Illinois Petroleum Marketers Association (IPMA) filed a request for temporary exemption from the rules, citing inadequate supplies of the cleaner-burning fuel.

The requests were denied in favor of clean air, and prices have since surged roughly a dime a gallon at the pumps.

Drivers in Chicago, one of the many cities where the new green fuel is mandated, were the first in the nation to pay more than $2.00 a gallon as the supply crunch worsened, and prices have been rising steadily since.

``A gas station operator, whose pump signs don't go above the two dollar mark, was forced to ask our office if he could sell gas in half gallons,'' said Chicago consumer commissioner Caroline Schoenberger. ``Its getting to be a cause for great concern.''

The Wisconsin government has since hired its state's largest law firm to look into legal ways to reduce consumer gasoline prices, with some speculating it will file suit against the EPA.

Chicago city councilors, meanwhile, are hotly debating rolling back a five cents a gallon gasoline tax, a proposal introduced Wednesday that lacks the support of the mayor's office due to prospective losses in revenue.

The EPA, meanwhile, has formally invited refiners supplying the Midwest to explain why they can't buff up supplies and relieve all the tension.

Crossing County Lines

As the government bodies wrangle, Midwest drivers have found a more immediate, and perhaps troublesome, solution to their woes: drive out of town, sometimes out of the county, to find the cheapest gasoline they can find.

The strategy works because, even though conventional gasoline prices are high, the new green gasoline which burns cleaner is generally 20 cents higher per gallon, and it is only sold in major cities and areas where smog is a problem.

``Why wouldn't you cross the line and find the cheaper fuel?'' said William Fleischli, director of the IPMA. ``Its happening more and more, with people getting the dirtier gasoline for cheaper and burning it up in the clean-fuel zones.''

In a letter sent by the Petroleum Marketers Association of America (PMAA) to the EPA last week, vice president John Huber says ``Our members have reported that.. sales have been diverted to stores outside (the clean-gasoline zones), which means that conventional gasoline, while not being sold in the reformulated gasoline areas, is being consumed there.''

``Thus, some of the benefits of reformulated gasoline are lost when prices get too high,'' he added.

Gasoline Dream World

But perhaps prices aren't too high.

U.S. drivers may feel they are paying through the nose for their fuel, but if they looked beyond their noses they'd see their prices are among the lowest on the globe.

In countries like England, Italy, France and Sweden, for example, the taxman often takes up to 80 percent of the full charge for retail gasoline as a favorite form of government revenue raising.

British drivers last year paid an average of $4.26 per U.S. gallon compared to the U.S. average of $1.16.

Furthermore, when adjusted for inflation, U.S. gasoline prices work out to be about 80 cents a gallon lower than they were in 1980 following the supply disruption created during the Iranian Revolution.

``In real terms, consumers today are paying considerably less for gasoline than they did during World War I,'' said Daniel Yergin, Pulitzer Prize winning author and oil analyst for Cambridge Energy research Associates.

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), June 09, 2000

Answers

Keep your eyes open for $1.999 specials in your neighborhood...

This would be a great pledge from a big oil company, "WE WILL NEVER SELL ANY GAS FOR MORE THAN $1.999" - Hey, it could happen...

If we had gone metric, it would be by the liter, so this wouldn't be a problem...

Since it is a problem going from 1.999 to 2.000, I guess it really is a ?2K problem...

<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), June 10, 2000.

Hey, now that I look at that again, I do like it.

"The citizens group to question $2.00 gas prices!"

This could be a new movement in the country! The ?2K movement!

Just think, we could use the internet! We could set up a web site, with a forum... ... ...

<:666= (evil grin)

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), June 10, 2000.

Lol Sysman, maybe...

"C2K" (Cents 2000) or

"2DG" (2 Dollar Gas) ??

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), June 10, 2000.

Ooops!

Guess that should be "C2H" (Cents 200). Does H stand for hundred in metric?

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), June 10, 2000.

K still works. They always sell gas at tenths of a cent, like $1.68 and 9/10, or $1.68.9 .?.

<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), June 10, 2000.

There is a very simple solution to this problem. As CPR has repeatedly pointed out, oil prices are going to CRASH SOON!, so all these gas stations have to do is wait until SOON!, when they will lower their prices. Why can't they figure this out? Maybe CPR will have to explain it to them again.

-- Sergeant Friday (just.The@facts.Maam), June 10, 2000.

I can already hear the cash registers ringing for the gasoline pump "remediation" consultants. :-)

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), June 10, 2000.

>As CPR has repeatedly pointed out, oil prices are going to CRASH SOON!, so

Regular gas is going for $1.89 (on average) in Columbus, OH, and the local AAA travel experts (for what they're worth) don't see a major reduction anytime soon. At least the co-workers who sometimes share a ride with me have quit complaining that my Civic is too small: I can run about three weeks on a tank of gas if I only drive to work and to the grocery store.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), June 10, 2000.

Umm ... I'm showing my age now. :)

Back during the Carter Administration, when gas first shot over $1.00 a gallon, the same thing happened. Pumps couldn't display the third digit, so some stations began selling by the 1/2-gallon.

It confused some blondes terribly (they were excited because they thought they were getting twice as much).

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), June 10, 2000.

Stephen, PLEASE, I have listened to Blonde Jokes for several hours, the blunt of the joke being a 46(?) year old who watches her 26 year old child lie dying. I feel like hugging and kissing any Blonde I see, , well maybe not all. it is a skin experience, you had to be there.

-- Blondes (are@fun.com), June 11, 2000.

You're right, I hate Blonde jokes...

Ever see a Polish pencil? It's got an eraser on both ends...

Ever see a Polish flashlight? It's solar powered...

Hummm, I don't think I've ever heard a Polish Blonde joke. Maybe it's just one of those things that occur in nature; the combination could lead to an antimatter reaction, or something...

<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), June 11, 2000.

Sysman, beware. =-]

-- Polish Lurkinator (Lurkyski.formerlyski@ski.yahooski.comski), June 14, 2000.

Prejudice involves the creation of victims from a set of their own predetermined conditions.

Putting the sexist and racist overtones aside ...

What makes blonde jokes more tolerable than traditional ethnic jokes? Maybe the fact that it is easier for blondes to disguise themselves, if they so choose. (I can feel another joke emerging now ...)

Plus, blondes have not yet figured out how to seize power as a radical minority.

Gives the rest of the world a safe outlet for this insatiable need to disparage.

-- Normally (Oxsys@aol.com), June 14, 2000.

Sorry Lurk, no offense intended.

One of my best friends is a 'ski. A few years ago, at his office birthday party, we gave him a Polish pencil. He still displays it proudly on his desktop, right next to his computer. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met. He designs mainframe control units. FYI a control unit is a "black box" that connects a mainframe channel to "everything else" like disk drives, tape drives, terminals, modems, ... If you have a new gizmo that you want to "hook up" to a mainframe, he's the man to see.

Now, I do have this other, blonde, friend, but I don't thing we should get into that here...

<:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), June 14, 2000.

Sysman --

I've found a great way to dispel the myth that Poles are slow or dumb.

When I hear a really nasty Polish joke, I just observe that Poland was the *very first* Warsaw Pact nation to successfully rebel against the Soviet Union, and that they're doing better, socially and economically, than any other Eastern European nation. They've even got a Polish stock exchange. That's not too shabby, especially when you consider how *little* they had to work with back in 1982. God bless Lech Walesa and the Solidarity members.

BTW, in Poland, they tell 'Czech jokes.' And one Polish friend of mine tells me that a new American joke comes out every four years. I wonder what he's getting at? =-]

-- --Lurkinator (Lurky.formerly@yahoo.com), June 15, 2000.