USA Today explains
why gas stations love lower pump prices:
Although retail gasoline prices have fallen 55% since mid-July, wholesale prices have plunged even more sharply -- 68%, according to the Oil Price Information Service. As a result, retailers have enjoyed record profit margins since mid-September.
"Guess what? They're making substantially more money at $1.89 (a gallon) than they were at $4.29," says OPIS chief oil analyst Tom Kloza.
Last week, The Pantry, one of the nation's largest gasoline retailers, posted profit of $23 million in its fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 25, four times the profit of the year-ago period. Ben Brownlow, an analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co., expects even better results for the current quarter.
"We're happy, our customers are happy," says Jinger Duryea, president of C.N. Brown, which owns 108 gas stations in Maine and New Hampshire. "It's not costing as much to buy the product and store the product."
