The well-kept $1.55 secret
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from July 1980.
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Another, who asked not to be named, said he dreamed about a price increase Tuesday night, and found his dream had come true Wednesday morning. Still another said the first he heard about it was when someone stopped at his station and told him.
James 'Sonny Boy' Bodden, manager of Esso's (Contd. on page 2) (from page 1) Jackson Point Terminal on South Church Street, said if price increases were announced beforehand, there would be "hoarding" and stations would probably "run out of fuel."
Leonel Wood, manager of the Texaco Carib Inc. terminal on Church Street, also said the price increase was not announced ahead of time because "we don't want the public to panic and run us out of fuel."
Both said they had notified the government in advance. The price increase was the third this year. Gas sold for $1.28 a gallon at the beginning of the year; but the price jumped to $1.46 on February 4. It rose to $1.50 on April 1 and on Wednesday morning, Esso stations on the island had changed their pump prices to $1.55. Texaco stations changed their prices later in the week when their new shipment arrived.
Gasoline prices also rose five cents a gallon on Cayman Brac, said Olney Scott, manager of J & J Motors Co. Ltd. He said he got the word Wednesday from Esso on Grand Cayman to raise the price to $1.95 a gallon.
The forty-cent price spread between gasoline prices on the two islands is due to the cost of shipping from Grand Cayman, he said.
A spokesman for Esso attributed the higher price to the latest round of increases announced in June by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The Cayman Islands get their fuel supplies from Venezuela, an OPEC nation, through Jamaica.
"We were the last people to know," said Delworth McLaughlin, owner of Delworth's Esso Service Centre on North Church Street. He added that he had "heard it kicking around the street the day before yesterday," but the first official word he heard was on the radio.
Velma Hew, a customer, commented that she thought it would have been better if there had been some advance announcement. The manager of Cayman Sands added that she could have "filled up earlier" and saved some money.
Taxi driver Ira Walton remarked that "gas like everything else is going up... We have no control over the Arab oil."
