As HOVENSA ran out of fuel it had stored since its closure, gas station owners on St. Croix found themselves finding new suppliers in Puerto Rico, joining a business decision that had been established for many years by owners here.<\/p>\n
The Consortium visited several gas stations here on Thursday, many of them boasting a price of $2.99 per gallon for regular fuel. They pay the same amount of taxes that gas station owners on St. Croix do, their WAPA rates are the same and they generally pay the same price from their Puerto Rican suppliers. Yet, they are able to sell their gasoline to customers at a considerably cheaper rate than their St. Croix counterparts, and still see profits. And at $2.99, a whopping $.40 difference compared to St. Croix.<\/p>\n
![\"Giant](\"https:\/\/viconsortium.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/giant-gas-st.thomas-300x199.jpg\")
<\/a>Giant Gas, a St. Thomas gas station. An employee told The Consortium that prices have been at $2.99 for “quite a while.”<\/p><\/div>\n
Senator Novelle Francis, who co-owns three gas stations on St. Croix along with his brothers, campaigned during the 2014 General Elections on the premise of making life easier for the people of the territory through economic development. But the gas station operation that he helps run have yet to move the needle below the $3.39 mark, a price that remains constant across the board, giving the look of price-fixing.<\/p>\n
As Senator Kurt Vialet has pointed out on many occasions, there is no competition on St. Croix. From Frederiksted to Christiansted, prices remain steady at $3.39, as if only one group owned all the gas stations on the island.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, Gateway Gas Station, the busiest operation on St. Croix, sent correspondence to The Consortium through its lawyers, warning the publication not to use images of its place of business when reporting on gas-related stories, fearing backlash from customers who may see the $3.39 price as a unfair.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, April 23, The Consortium visited four gas stations<\/a><\/span> on St. Croix —\u00a0Queen B Gas Station, Karim Service Station and One Love Gas Station \u2014 all located in the Frederiksted area, and Super Tanker Service Station in Sunny Isle — seeking answers as to why prices hadn’t decreased with world trends.<\/p>\n 1st Stop Gas Station, St. Thomas.<\/p><\/div>\n Bernadette Benjamin, co-owner of Queen\u00a0B Gas Station located across from K-Mart west and adjacent to Subway, told the publication\u00a0that although they were seeing higher profit margins, there was a risk to lowering the price below the retail markup of $3.39 per gallon. Back then, her rational was that they were purchasing gasoline from HOVENSA, who was selling its gas at a discounted rate in an effort to clear inventory, and therefore dropping the price and having to go back up in two weeks (the projected time HOVENSA was expected to stop the sale) when they would again be purchasing gas from Puerto Rican suppliers, would not have been a wise business decision.<\/p>\n \u201cI think because we\u2019re going to be buying gasoline from HOVENSA for two weeks and then it\u2019s going to go back up. Nobody wants to go down to go back up,\u201d Benjamin said.<\/p>\n However, that was five months ago, when oil was trading at or around $60 per barrel. These days, oil on world markets hover around the $40-$45 mark — but St. Croix gas stations refuse to follow their St. Thomas counterparts by decreasing the price of gas.<\/p>\n Queen B\u2019s co-owner, Chad Pringle, tried to explain to The Consortium the difficulty in lowering the price when it\u2019s sure to climb back up.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day you are a businessman,\u201d Chad said. \u201cSo, if I interrupt my profit margins, when gas goes back up in Puerto Rico, I have just decreased my profit margins and guess what, nobody is going to go back up when\u00a0you\u2019re already going back down.\u201d<\/p>\n Another St. Thomas gas station selling fuel at $3.22.<\/p><\/div>\n He added: \u201cSo you\u2019re decreasing your profit margin when\u00a0you go down, so you are at a loss when the two and three weeks are over and you can no longer buy from HOVENSA.\u201d<\/p>\n The Consortium\u00a0pressed Pringle on his explanation, asking why not raise the prices when they go back up.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be hard to raise back up because you\u2019re already set back at your lower price,\u201d he said. Pringle, like his partner, Benjamin, said the reason gas was below $4.00 per gallon is because they made the decision before any other gas station to lower the price.<\/p>\n Furthermore, Benjamin said when they decided to go below the $4.00 mark, Arab gas station owners started calling.<\/p>\n \u201cWe started the price war,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cWhen we put the price down, oh my goodness! We got calls from a lot of Arab gas station owners saying, \u2018how is that you all put the price down; you all are going to create a war in St. Croix,\u2019 and they\u00a0continued saying a lot of nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n Again, that was five months ago when oil was trading considerably higher, but neither Queen B., a locally-owned operation along with the Francis brothers, have lowered the cost of fuel on St. Croix.<\/p>\n Sen. Vialet have lamented the plight of St. Croix consumers on numerous occasions, as the economy there was hit much harder than St. Thomas, and yet they have to pay much more for gasoline.<\/p>\n On Monday, the senator said<\/a><\/span> gas stations on St. Croix were “ripping off” the people. On Tuesday, he reiterated his stance and called on the Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs to put a cap<\/a><\/span> on the profit margin of gas and force the owners to take the government to court.<\/p>\n \u201cPerhaps we\u2019re going to have to let them take us to court,” Vialet said. “Put a cap on the markup and let them open up the books in court and show us how much they\u2019re marking it up. Let us go to court so we could reveal what is going in the gas industry. Something needs to done.<\/p>\n![\"first-stop-gas](\"https:\/\/viconsortium.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/first-stop-gas-station-300x199.jpg\")
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