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" Imagine if you&amp;#039;d had the chance a year ago to lock in the price of gas when it was under $2.50 a gallon. You&amp;#039;d be feeling pretty smug right about now. Let&amp;#039;s say you had that same opportunity again--at today&amp;#039;s prices. Would you do it? The concept of fixed-price gas first got attention this spring when folks in a co-op-like arrangement in St. Cloud, Minnesota, gloated about still paying under a dollar a gallon for gas they bought in bulk years ago. (Nice.) Now the idea&amp;#039;s taking off nationally with two new programs--one from Gulf Oil (gulfoil.com), which operates twenty-five hundred stations in the northeast, and the other from an Internet-based outfit called Fuel Bank (fuelbank.com). Both are scheduled to launch in the next few months, with Fuel Bank starting in a couple of states, possibly California and Florida, before rolling out to the rest of the country a little later. The programs work like this: You go online and commit to buying, at current prices, a certain amount of gas--fifty gallons, a thousand gallons, or as much as you want--over the next year or two. With Fuel Bank you pay the full amount up front; with Gulf, you pay a portion--possibly 20 percent. You&amp;#039;re then sent a swipe card you can use at any pump (or, in the case of Gulf, at any Gulf pump) to get your rate as you draw on your virtual reserves. The companies put the money into the oil-futures and options markets, using complicated hedging to manage their risks and making their profit off the margins. All this sounds delightful until you consider: What happens if prices actually go down after you buy in? Both programs plan to offer two options: One, which will cost you a surcharge of ten to fifteen cents per gallon, will allow you to simply pay the lower rate--essentially a guarantee. With the other, you&amp;#039;re simply screwed: You pay the locked-in price--or hold off on dipping into your reserves. In other words, it&amp;#039;s a gamble. But is it a smart one? &amp;quot;Industry forecasters, people like us, think that prices are going to start to erode in early 2007, then a lot more in late 2007,&amp;quot; says Mary Novak, of the strategic forecasting firm Global Insight. The Department of Energy, for instance, predicts that gas will dip to near $2.50 in January. &amp;quot;That would mean now is not a good time to buy forward,&amp;quot; says Novak, who is no fan of the fixed-price concept. &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t believe retail customers are smart enough and attuned with the market enough to adequately evaluate&amp;quot; the direction of gas prices. (Ouch.) Still, doing nothing is a gamble, too. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/cars/a2066/esq1006fixedgas-1/>