GULFPORT, Miss. -- By mid-afternoon last Friday, even before Hurricane Dennis made landfall, the Mississippi Attorney General's Office had received 32 complaints about gasoline price gouging, said Grant Hedgepeth, director of consumer protection for the state agency. And in Florida, as of Sunday morning, the AG's office had receivedmore than1,300 complaints of gasoline price gouging, according to Jim Smith, president of the Florida Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association.
Dennis weakened to a tropical depression on Monday after hurtling [image-nocss] into northwest Florida with 120-mph winds on Sunday, and killing 32 people in the Caribbean last week. The storm hit an area similar to last year's Hurricane Ivan, but Dennis was more compact and moved faster, which reduced damage from the 2005 hurricane. Dennis could trigger losses of up to $5 billion for insurers, said Reuters, citing risk modeling companies.
"Unless we find somebody going up to three bucks or so, I think it's just from the jump in oil prices," Hedgepeth told the Associated Press. "From what I've been able to tell, prices did go up drastically this week, not just in Mississippi but worldwide. I think hikes of 15 cents to 20 cents are going to be the norm."
The price of a barrel of crude oil surpassed $61 last Wednesdaya record highand that had begun to trickle down to the pumps by week's end; however, steep increases at an individual store out of sync with other retailers could indicate that someone is profiting from a disaster, AP said.
Prices for regular gasoline on the coast on Friday ranged from $2.08 to $2.25.
Jerry Wilkerson, the executive director of the Mississippi Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association, said its members had to raise prices to keep from losing money. Their wholesale price had increased by 8 cents on Sunday, 3 cents on Tuesday and 10 cents on Wednesday.
"That's a 21-cent increase," Wilkerson told AP. "They know this storm is out there. They know what it is going to look like when they go up 21 cents. If they're going to sit there and lose 10 or 12 cents a gallon, they would be better off to close their doors. They can't afford to lose that kind of money."
Michael Wright, vice president of public affairs for AAA, said Hurricane Dennis is likely to cause gasoline prices to go higher. "The Gulf region produces more gas than it uses," Wright told AP. "Consequently, that's shipped all over the country. The major refinery region of the U.S. is the Gulf Coast, primarily Louisiana and Texas."
If refineries sustain damage or temporarily cease operations, supplies decrease and gasoline prices go up. Prices on the commodities market are set in anticipation of what might occur during a hurricane.
"No question about it, it's going to affect the off-loading of crude," Wright said. "If shipments don't arrive, that will send prices north."
Smith told CSP Daily News that the storm moved through Florida faster than any storm did last year, and as a result, caused less damage. Although residents felt 45-mile-per-hour winds, he said the storm actually died down prior to coming onshore. The areas affected generally were the counties in the far western panhandle of the state, namely Oskaloosa, Santa Rosa and Escambia. Smith said he has heard no reports of damages.
As of Monday morning, terminals in Pensacola, Fla., and Biloxi, Miss., were open, with the terminal in Mobile, Ala., also operational with the help of a generator. The only real problems, according to Smith, came with a large Shell terminal in Atmore, Ala., which was hit very hard and may need some time to become fully operational.
Smith said that retailers there are now keeping their eye on a storm off the coast of Africa. When it arrives in the United States, he said it will be called Emily. Too early to tell if it will be a threat, he added.
Concerning gouging, Smith said in the latest issue of the group's PetroNotes, "During the course of the weekend I had personal conversations with [Florida] Attorney General Charlie Crist and with Paul Driggers, the General Counsel with the Department of Agriculture, on the issue of price gouging. I advised both of the wholesale price increases that [Florida petroleum retailed] all have been experiencing since July 1. I followed that up with e-mails to confirm those numbers. As of Sunday morning, the AG's office had received over 1,300 complaints of gasoline price gouging. I repeated the position of this association, and that was we are fully supportive of their efforts to prevent price gouging, but they should be sure that it has occurred before they go public with accusations. They never make the public or media aware of the names of businesses that were accused of price gouging, but were not guilty of any violation. They just leave your customers with the thought that you took advantage of them."
Meanwhile, in other weather-related news, Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. has shipped more than 4,000 cases of canned drinking water to aid relief efforts in Alabama, and the company will be delivering an additional 10,780 cases later this week. The water was shipped to Bama Bud, the A-B wholesaler in Montgomery, Ala. The drinking water is being distributed to the Red Cross and other relief agencies at the request of the governor of Alabama.
Earlier A-B donated more than 43,000 cases of water to wholesalers in Florida. The delivery of the water was made possible by several independent carriers, said St. Louis-based A-B.
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