IU, Bloomington drowning at the gas pump as prices rise

Three years ago one gallon of unleaded gasoline in Indiana cost about $1.50; today the price of that same gallon of gas is hovering just below $3.00, and automotive-fuel prices are expected to sputter even higher throughout the summer driving season.\nWith the cost of one barrel of crude oil flirting above $70 and the cost of one gallon of gasoline possibly never again dipping below $2, community members continue to shoulder the United States' energy burden that is the nation's addiction and dependence on domestic and foreign fossil fuels. The United States' oil habit swallows about one-quarter of the world's resources even though the United States produces only 3 percent of the petroleum it needs, according to the U.S. government's Energy Information Adminstration.\nAmericans consume an estimated 20 million barrels of oil a day. Some economists project the United States will need more than 28 million barrels by the end of the next decade. Increased national demand and a temperamental international oil market are often cited as reasons why gas prices continue to climb, while some community members have little choice but to reach even deeper into their pocketbooks to pay the price for a full-tank of gasoline.\nMike Clark, director of the IU Campus Bus Service, said the university allocates a certain amount of money each year for a combination of soy-based ethanol and diesel gas to fuel the campus bus system as part of their annual budget. The problem with rising gas costs, he said, is that the bus system will run a deficit any given year if the price for each gallon of gas quoted in the budget does not reflect the average market price by the end of the year.\nIU Campus Bus Service was allotted $217,000 in gas costs at $1.75 per gallon for the 2005-2006 school year to fuel their 27 campus bus fleet, Clark said, but so far the campus buses have motored through $263,261 worth of fuel as of the end of April.\n"It's an educated guess as to what the price of gas will be next year, but the board of trustees just passed a budget that pays for gas at $3 per gallon for 2006-2007," he said. "Fuel costs have fluctuated throughout the years but they started increasing substantially last year. Whatever the cost is we will just have to pay it, or we cannot run our buses as scheduled."\nClark said there is little the bus service can do to reduce other gas costs because the nature of busing implies stop-and-go traffic with constant braking to pick-up passengers throughout the day.\n"Gas prices are ridiculous and incredibly high," said graduate student Megan McPhail beneath the shade of a local gas station overhang while she pumped more than eight gallons of gas at $2.85 per gallon into her 2000 Honda Civic. "I fill my tank up every time because right now my parents pay for my gas. I'm not looking forward to some day paying for gas myself and I have a feeling I will find other ways to get around like riding the city bus."\nMcPhail ended up with a tab for $26 worth of gasoline, a product she said she knows very little about. She said fossil fuel is more or less a mystery to her and she does not know where the money goes when she forks over her cash to the gas station attendant.\nMore than 400 million gallons of the 840 million gallons of petroleum products the United States consumes each day are devoted to fueling more than 200 million motor vehicles that travel more than seven billion miles of U.S. roadway each day, according to the Energy Information Agency. Gasoline is made from crude oil, which was formed from the remains of tiny aquatic plants and animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago.\nBoth domestic and foreign supplies of oil are pumped from underground drilling stations and the collected "black gold" is transported to oil refineries that create several oil products like gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, jet fuel and liquefied petroleum gas among others, according to the EIA. The refined oil is then shipped to various pipeline structures and storage facilities that use tankers or barges to transport the refined products to national bulk storage terminals. \nTanker trucks often distribute the refined oil products to individual customers and gas stations that sell the oil products to consumers. According to the EIA, common blends of gasoline found within the international marketplace include Algeria Saharan Blend, Indonesia Minas, Nigeria Bonny Light, Saudi Arabia Arab Light, Dubai Fateh, Venezuela Tia Juana, Mexico Isthmus and the American preference for the low-sulfur West Texas Intermediate that is very light and sweet. \nFor every dollar each community member spends on one gallon of gasoline, an estimated 55 cents of that total is spent on the cost of crude oil, 22 cents is spent on refining, 19 cents is spent on government taxes and 5 percent is spent on distribution and marketing, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. This price breakdown does not include the cost of gas station overhead, nor speak to the effects of increasing gasoline costs on mass transportation systems like taxi cab companies, police and fire agencies, city and university busing or rental trucking companies like U-Haul.\nBesides the millions of lower-middle class to working class Americans who often depend on older and less fuel efficient autos for daily driving, some community members are not fretting about the cost of gas because most economic indicators predict a reasonably confident average consumer continuing to spend disposable income on extra goods like candy bars and soda pop, even on the same gas pumping trip.\nBloomington resident Kevin Jones, a one-year gas station attendant at the BP located on the corner of Indiana Avenue and Third Street near the IU Sample Gates, said he has noticed a lot of gas-consuming customers who spend increments of $5, $10 and $20 to fuel their auto instead of filling-up their tank. He said some of the larger sport utility vehicle owners are continuing to drop $60 at the cash register for a full-tank of gas regardless of ever increasing gas costs. \n"Customers are still spending the same amount of money each visit as they were before gas prices increased earlier this year," he said. "They are spending less money on gas but people are still buying Polar Pops, and they end up spending more on sugary liquids per ounce than they are on their gas. Snack foods are ridiculously more expensive than gas"