Will pain at the pump lower consumption?

High price of oil habit

The price of oil leapt past $90 a barrel Thursday but pump prices barely budged this week.

If gasoline prices were to spike to record highs as well, would that finally be enough to get Americans to recast their oil-dependent lives?
“It’s the old question: How much pain does it take to get you to change your behavior?” said Nadia Adawi of the Energy Cooperative in Philadelphia. “More than we’ve experienced so far” was her answer.

Some changes are under way.

Locally, people are flocking to PhillyCarShare as a way to cut the amount they drive, high-mileage hybrid vehicles are gaining market share, and sales of vehicles that can use a blend of 85 percent ethanol are climbing.

“We’re actually doing pretty well with them,” Mike Peterson, new-car and truck manager at Bryner Chevrolet in Jenkintown, said of the so-called flexible-fuel vehicles, which can use E85 or regular gasoline. Some General Motors Corp. models come standard with flex-fuel capability.

Peterson estimated that Bryner had delivered 150 to 200 flex-fuel vehicles this year, up from 50 to 75 last year.

That sounds good, but for one big problem: There’s only one station in the region – at 12th and Vine Streets in Philadelphia – that sells E85.

That means owner John Ciccone has a lock on a very small and disappointing business. “The response has not been what you might think it would be,” said Ciccone, who opened the Shell station in January.

He has been selling 3,000 to 5,000 gallons per month of E85, compared with 110,000 gallons per month of regular gasoline. Many customers with flex-fuel vehicles pull up to the regular gasoline pumps because they don’t know they can use E85, Ciccone said.

That happens even though he charges a couple of cents less for E85. Yesterday, E85 was $2.83 a gallon, compared with $2.85 for regular.

He said sales of biodiesel, a fuel that uses agricultural resources, have been stronger, accounting for about one-third of the 25,000 gallons of diesel he sells a month. “Diesel has a foothold in the United States,” he said.

The Philadelphia Inquirer