A gas station in Clinton and a fuel supplier in Spartanburg will pay $5,500 to the American Red Cross to settle with the state Attorney General's Office over price gouging during the 2008 hurricane season.
Transmontaigne - a wholesale supplier and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Morgan Stanley Capital Group, Inc - will donate $5,000 according to the Ag's office. Transmontaigne is located at 2300 Southport Road in Spartanburg.
Transmontaigne's prices were significantly higher than other suppliers' prices during the crisis. Investigators found that Transmontaigne's prices were directly linked to the U.S. Gulf Coast price on a daily basis.
The AG investigation said that other suppliers, while they may have experienced the same costs as Transmontaigne, distributed price increases over a wider time period and did not contractually link their sales to the daily U.S. Gulf Coast benchmark.
A Citgo gas station - located at 19002 Highway 72 East in Clinton - will donate $500. Two other gas stations in the Midlands are included in the settlement over price hikes following Hurricane Ike, which struck the Gulf Coast in September, 2008.
The AG investigation revealed the Citgo station in Clinton never exceeded $4.68 per gallon for gas during the crisis. However, investigators say prices remained significantly elevated during the weeks after the crisis.
The other gas stations cited were Bobb's Food and Fuel in Lexington and Best Stop in West Columbia.
The Attorney General's Office received approximately 4,360 complaints about suspected gas price gouging. Retailers' markups in 2008 were actually much less severe than they were with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"To put it in perspective, a station would have had to charge $7.57 per gallon in 2008 to match the highest- priced stations in 2005," said Attorney General Henry McMaster in a written statement.
A total of $6,500 is being donated to the American Red Cross for hurricane relief.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement