Gas prices have jumped about 10 percent so far this year in Southwest Florida, and the pain at the pump is expected to get worse in the next few months.
Prices for standard-grade gasoline here will be pushing $4 a gallon by the end of April or early May, predicts Tom Kloza, chief analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.
“I don’t think it is going to stay there for long, but it looks pretty certain to get there,” Kloza said.
The average price of a gallon of standard gasoline in the greater Fort Myers area Monday was $3.672, according to the daily survey published by the Oil Price Information Service, AAA and Wright Express. That’s up from $3.319 at the first of the year and up 17 percent from a year ago, when it was $3.13.
“It’s not the demand for gasoline that’s doing it because U.S. demand for gas is about the lowest it has been since January 2000,” Kloza said.
Instead, the supply of gasoline is getting squeezed because several refineries in the U.S. and the Virgin Islands have shut down recently, Kloza said. Crude oil prices have been climbing, but the weak demand for gasoline means refineries were spending more to produce gas than they could sell it for.
That weak demand may ultimately bring prices down this summer, Kloza said.
In 2011, gas prices peaked at $3.915 in May. The all-time record locally is $4.064 in July 2008.
Regardless of where prices go, the increases are hitting wallets and business ledgers hard.
DeeOndra Watkins, 47, of Fort Myers, said it gets harder to make ends meet each month.
“Gas goes up. Food goes up. Everything goes up,” Watkins said. “My paycheck isn’t going up.”
Watkins, who works in a doctor’s office, said she thinks the high gas prices are contributing to Southwest Florida’s double-digit unemployment rate.
“I know people who can’t hold a job because they can’t afford to keep driving to work,” she said.
Gasoline is one of the largest expense items for many businesses. Michael Ryan, owner of Fort Myers-based Tempco Pest Control, said his gas bill for keeping 14 trucks on the road can run as high as $8,000 a month.
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“We are in an economy where we can’t be raising customer prices every time gasoline goes up,” Ryan said. “It always seems to be going up. It may fall back a little bit from time to time, but it is always going higher the next time.”
To help cut fuel costs, Ryan said the company installed GPS devices in its trucks to be sure drivers are sticking to work-related routes. The monitoring uncovered an unexpected savings, he said.
“We looked at idling time and we found out guys were leaving the trucks running all day so they could keep the air-conditioning running,” Ryan said. “By changing that, we cut almost $1,000 from our monthly fuel costs.”
Ryan said the company has also replaced some older pickups with more fuel-efficient Ford Transit vans.
John Poelker, a co-owner of MBA Airport Transportation, the taxi concessionaire at Southwest Florida International Airport, said the company has also tried to be more efficient, replacing older Mercury Marquis models with more efficient Kia Sedonas and Nissan Sentras.
“It looks to me like these higher prices are going to be long-term and we have to look at all the alternatives we have,” Poelker said.
In 2008, the company imposed a fuel surcharge on taxi trips that varied with the length of the trip as prices topped $4 a gallon. Poelker said he expects those charges will likely return if prices go that high again.
The company’s drivers are independent contractors and pay for their own fuel, so any fuel charge would be paid to them.
“It’s tough on them,” Poelker said. “They get these long runs and you can imagine how much that adds up in gas.”
The rising prices shouldn’t cloud anyone’s Valentine’s Day celebrations too much.
Greg DePasquale, owner of Fort Myers Floral Designs, said he has yet to adjust his prices for the rising fuel costs.
“I haven’t had to do that yet, but we need to be able to make deliveries and still have the same quality that our customers expect,” DePasquale said.
He said some suppliers have already added a few dollars to the wholesale costs because of gas prices.
J. Arthur Clement, 68, a part-time resident from New Jersey, said prices were already higher in Southwest Florida when he arrived last month and they have kept going up.
“It looks like it is going to cost a lot more to go home in a couple of months,” Clement said. “I hope we can afford the whole trip.”
