A Facebook group titled “Boycotting Athens gas stations!” has 2.8k members and serves as a forum for local residents to express concerns about high gas prices in the Athens area.
Users on the site often post pictures of the gas prices in Athens, as well as neighboring cities and towns that are much cheaper. Many of the members advocate driving to places such as Parkersburg, West Virginia, Lancaster and Chillicothe to save money on gas.
The average price of gas in Ohio during October was $2.91 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Athens resident and member of the Facebook group Steve Pierson discussed how high gas prices are a burden on Athens residents, citing Athens County being the most impoverished county in Ohio, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.
“Athens County is identified as one of the poorest counties in the whole state of Ohio,” Pierson said. “A lot of those people are working jobs that don't pay as well, they may be minimum wage jobs or lower wage jobs, and the cost of fuel is the same for them as it is for the person that makes $250,000 a year, and a gallon of gas price is the same for everyone, but it's a bigger chunk, a bigger percentage of that low income driver.”
The reason for the high prices is not known, but Pierson said it could be due to a lack of options with lower prices in the area.
“The only thing, I guess, is just basic economics, competition,” Pierson said. “Right here in town, I can just go to Speedway and Go Mart.”
Other options include the Kroger on East State Street, Sunoco on Court Street and the Shop Mart on Stimson Avenue.
Athens City Councilmember Alan Swan, D-4th Ward, has lived in Athens since 1979 and worked in the school yearbook business. His job often took him across the state, from New Philadelphia to Steubenville.
“I drove about 30,000 miles a year, and I like to buy local as much as I can, but rarely in those 34 years did I buy gas in the city of Athens,” Swank said. “And the reason was because gas in the city of Athens is always, always, always higher than some place I could get gas along the road when I was going from one of my yearbook schools to another.”
Swank calculated the average price of gas in Athens and compared it to other areas in the state, using GasBuddy, an app that finds local, cheap gas stations. According to Swank, on Nov. 3, the average price of gas in Athens was $2.99, whereas prices in Chillicothe were $2.79.
“For every five-cent difference based on 465 gallons a year, that's $23.25, so if you get up to a 20-cent difference, that's $93 a year,” Swank said.
Swank also discussed the rise of gas prices on busy Ohio University weekends such as move-in, move-out, Homecoming and Halloween.
“It's very predictable,” Swank said. “They go up, and then when all the visitors leave town on Monday or Tuesday, they go back down a little bit. And that's what fires people up, because they feel, and I'm not saying they are, but they feel that the stations are in collusion ... people have actually said it's price fixing.”
According to Swank, it has been an issue in Athens for a long time. Swank said in recent years, however, people have become more aware of issues from social media, such as property taxes and gas prices.
“Social media has taken the place of the corner pub in terms of people sharing information, this, that and the other,” Swank said. “And it spreads much, much, much quicker than people who can fit in the corner pub.”
Many members of the group call for changes to be made by local officials, but Swank said these elected positions do not make regulatory decisions.
“I worked for the city of Athens for 14 years and nine years for the city of Nelsonville,” Pierson said. “I can tell you, I was never involved in any administrative discussion on how to control the price of gasoline.”
Pierson stated the Facebook group is a place where people can express their frustrations, believing many people will not actually drive to farther places to fill their tanks up.
Swank continued to discuss what locals can do to advocate for lower prices and figure out why there is a discrepancy in gas pricing.
“It's my opinion that locally, there is no governmental body that can do anything about this,” Swank said. “So my suggestion would be to contact either the Attorney General's Office for the state of Ohio in Columbus, or the Consumer Council in the city of Columbus.”
