House Bill 1164 Gasoline price changes. Rep. Cochran. “Provides that it is a deceptive act for a gasoline dealer to change the per gallon price of gasoline more than one time a day.” A dealer must set the price of gasoline for each day between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. and may not change the per gallon price of gasoline again until between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. the following day.
Is this a big problem? Seems awfully nit-picky to me.
[tags]HB1164-2007, oil[/tags]
I’m curious about this, too. I understand that chain gas stations and convenience stores get their orders to change gasoline prices from higher ups–perhaps not even located in Indiana. I have observed convenience store managers get the call to change the gas prices in the middle of the afternoon–with the subsequent action suggesting that the call was an order to immediately change the prices, not wait until the next morning. Maybe someone thinks that consumers need to be able to rely on gas prices not changing for at least 24 hours.
Doug,
It does sound nit-picky, but it might make sense if it’s practically impossible to bring a case for price-gouging against filling stations otherwise. The interesting question is, “is it”?
For this to work, the state Attorney General has to be willing to prosecute such things…and Steve Carter doesn’t exactly belong to the political party that looks askance at the practices of oil companies.
It is nit-picky.
In other news, did you know that it is against Indiana law to sell gasoline at a loss? Try to comprehend that one. I don’t want the ‘offender’ fined or jailed, I want him the get a medal.
I’m not sure the best way to combat it, but the idea there is probably to prevent a big oil company from coming in, flooding the market until competitors fold, then having a monopoly. It was standard operating procedure for John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil back in the day.
Mike Kole,
Yeah, that’s called dumping, and it’s an old, old idea, probably as old as commodities markets in Babylon.
One locally-owned chain of gas stations closed here recently. The owners claimed that they couldn’t beat the national/regional chains on price. Could be that smaller chains/local gas station owners have the ear of someone in the legislature. I don’t know if the intent is to prevent “dumping” so much as it is to help the smaller gas station owners compete in areas where the national chains are dominant. Maybe the idea isn’t so much to prevent BP, for instance, from obtaining a monopoly so much as it is to prevent the combination of BP, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Speedway,etc., in one place from putting all the locals out of business. Not much of a distinction, perhaps.
Pila,
I’m all in favor effective competition, so in general I like the idea of locally-owned, non-chain businesses and I try to patronize them when I can.
In the retail fuel market, though, I wonder if the General Assembly can do anything effective. There’s been so much consolidation on the supply side that the refiners and distributors (all part of, or wholly owned subsidiaries of, Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, etc.) can easily dictate terms to the retailers.
It’s kind of the Wal-Mart scenario (retailer putting irresistible pressure on suppliers) in reverse.