At least according to Gene Guilford, head of the Independent Connecticut Petroleum Marketers Association.
On Tuesday Governor M. Jodi Rell and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced the state would subpoena records from Cumberland Farms in an effort to determine whether the company was guilty of gasoline price gouging.
A state hotline set up after Hurricane Ike hit Texas has yielded about 500 complaints — about a third accusing Cumberland Farms of jacking up prices to as much as 48-cents-per-gallon.
But today Guilford sought to attribute at least some of the reported weekend price hikes to basic economics.
Guilford in an e-mail said that between Sept. 11 and Sept. 15, the average wholesale price of gasoline shipped into New Haven harbor increased from $2.83-per-gallon to $3.19-per-gallon.
“One would hope no one would expect local retailers to absorb 36-cent-per-gallon increases in wholesale costs and not pass anythign along through their retail prices,” Guilford wrote.
He said he respects and supports the government’s watchdog role in pricing “but let’s nto soely focus on the retil level without regard to how these retailers are being hammered by huge increase in their wholesale costs of gasoline.”
Although it can be politically popular to accuse gas stations of treating consumers unfairly, past efforts by Blumenthal have yielded results.
In 2006 the owners of seven gas stations agreed to pay the state over $33,000 to settle allegations that they took advantage of drivers by illegally raising prices in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast. They did not, however, admit guilt.
