Americans show they're prone to unwarranted panic with gas prices

Seventy years after Orson Welles’s radio play “The War of the Worlds” resulted in people jamming roads, hiding in cellars and taking up arms to defend themselves from an invasion from Mars, America is still very gullible and prone to unwarranted panic.

As television, radio, Internet and newspaper outlets provided continuous media coverage of Hurricane Ike’s assault on Texas last week, the misleading use of “gas shortage” sent many folks across South Carolina and the country into a panic.

Fearing a shortage, people jammed gas stations to fill or top off their gasoline tanks, and some even filled gasoline cans for extra reserve. They called family and friends and told them to do the same.

As a result, gasoline prices in South Carolina soared to record levels. Some Florence gasoline stations increased their prices by 80 cents or more in a 24-hour period Thursday and Friday. One station’s price for a gallon of regular unleaded went from $3.89 to $4.59 in a span of 30 minutes on Friday evening.

According to a AAA Carolinas press release, the average cost for a gallon of regular unleaded in South Carolina on Monday was a record high $4.12.

With the eye of Ike making landfall 1,100 miles away in Galveston, Texas, and the price of oil and wholesale gasoline trending downward last week, the rush on local gas stations and the resulting spike in prices was senseless.

With at least 80 percent of Americans living in urban areas, we can get to where we need to go without our cars. The worst that could have happened is Ike could have caused a delay in fuel shipments, every station in Florence could have been without gasoline for a few days and we would have had to use public transportation, a neighbor, a bicycle or our legs to get to places such as work, school or the doctor.

In the history of the world, there has never been a true shortage of oil or gasoline. Even when supplies were limited in the 1970s by OPEC’s politically motivated break in oil shipments to countries supporting Israel in a war with Egypt and Syria and the Shah of Iran’s exile, the United States made it through by conserving the fuel we had.

When a gasoline station runs out of fuel today, it doesn’t mean there is a worldwide or nationwide shortage. The lack of fuel because of panic-stricken drivers stops at the pump and ends as soon as the next tanker makes a scheduled delivery.

Owners of convenience stores and gasoline stations generally don’t make their living off what they sell at the pump. Their biggest profits come from what is sold inside the store or in the garage.

But when owners of gasoline stations see a panic-stricken run on their fuel inventory, they raise the price of gasoline like any other commodity that is in demand in a free market. And when some stations run out of gasoline because of consumer panic, other stations further raise prices to take advantage of the strong demand.

Make no mistake, though, that the uneducated consumer is mostly to blame in such a situation. While state attorney generals try to combat price gouging, who can truly blame an owner of a gasoline station for making an extra dollar off public ignorance? In our capitalistic world, other forms of business do the same every day.

As consumers, what can we do to hold down gasoline prices in the face of a hurricane? For starters, don’t panic. Buy gas as you normally would. If you normally buy gasoline on a day a hurricane hits, buy it. If you don’t need gasoline that day, take steps to better conserve what you have and wait to buy it when you need it.

If all drivers do this, odds are no stations will run out of gasoline, and we won’t have to endure more pain at the pump than we’re already feeling.