Petrol guzzling in California

Press, 18 April 1979, Page 20

Petrol guzzling in California

From

JOHN HUTCHISON

in San Francisco

As petrol gets more expensive and President Carter pleads with Americans to use less, Californians continue to set records for consuming it.

With more than 15M motor vehicles and about the same number of licensed drivers, California is far and away the hungriest consumer of petrol. Not even New York State, next in rank with about nine million licensees, comes close.

Motor vehicles burned more than 45.000 M litres in California last year, and in spite of continuing rises in prices at the pump, consumption is still rising. It costs from 20c (U.S.) to 24c a litre, and at some stations even more, depending -on the grade and the seller’s profit margin.

There is a Government ceiling on price, but there are some legal variances, and the regulation is also widely ignored by unscrupulous dealers wh*» know that few consumers understand the pricing regulations.

A national “hotline” telephone exchange is said, however, to be swamped with complaints of price-gouging, presently beyond the capacity of

limited staff to take action. At 24c, the level is twice the 1973 price. Petrol shortage, still disputed by many Americans as an artifically-contrived device to justify price increases, has not reached the crisis levels of the 1973 and 1974 Arab oil embargo.

But some service stations, their supply pinched, have begun to close earlier in the day qr on week-ends. The effect on motorists has been inconvenience, not pan e.

Knowing that they may have difficulty buying during week-ends, consumers can, in a few localities, be seen forming queues — “like jungle beasts around a watering hole,” one columnist wrote.

The retail petrol trade less attractive to dealers than it once was. In 1972, there were 22,400 petrol stations in California. Today, with increased population and many more vehicles, a fourth of that total has disappeared. Oil companies favour the stations they own, discouraging independent dealers who must buy from them. Rent, attendants’ wages and worry about the future have driven many station owners into alternative businesses.

The shortage, or at least the threat of it, has caused an upward trend in the purchase of small cars, although they have for nearly ■ three decades been more popular in California than in most of the nation.

Promotion of car and van pools, public transport, and more walking and cycling, is active. But in a state like California, where almost every resident has a lifetime association with the automobile as the accepted means of travel, and where few public transport systems have ever been adequate, such campaigns have hard sledding. California is by no means totally dependent on imported Oil. The state has had commercial oil wells for more than a century, and it underwent a huge oil boom between 1900 and 1920. Until the end of the Second World War it was virtually selfsufficient in oil production. Its output now is substantial and comprises 70 per cent of the state’s mineral product. Although there is great, ecological controversy about it, exploration, both offshore and on onshore continues, and there are significant proven reserves still untapped.