I've know about this one for some time but only tonight after making a trip to Burlington with my brother did I decide to write about it. You see, he commented that gas prices are lower in Burlington than they are in Greensboro and wondered how long they had been that way. I replied, "As far as I can tell, gas prices have always averaged .10 cents per gallon cheaper in Burlington than they do in Greensboro."
A GasBuddy.com check shows that today's gas prices in Burlington are running from $3.49 per gallon to $3.75 per gallon for regular unleaded while the prices in Greensboro run from $3.53 per gallon to $3.75 per gallon but that doesn't tell the whole story. The price most commonly displayed in Burlington was $3.57 and in Greensboro, $3.66 per gallon.
Now ordinarily I wouldn't wonder much about about an 8-10 cent difference between cities but a couple of things seem strange to me. Gasoline is always cheaper in Burlington and every gallon, every ounce, every drop of gasoline that is sold in every pump in every convenience store, service station and gas station in all of Burlington and Alamance County is trucked from petroleum tank farms located on the west edge of Greensboro, through Greensboro and on to Burlington. What that means is that while the wholesale cost of gasoline in Burlington is higher than in Greensboro, somehow the retail price of gasoline is lower.
And since state gasoline taxes are the same all over the state I can't help but wonder if local government is somehow responsible for this difference in retail prices? And does this have anything to do with why local leaders seem to want to put all our jobs at the county lines?
