The Roanoke Times | File 2008

The state received more than 1,115 complaints of price-gouging by gas stations after oil operations were disrupted in the fall.

State officers assigned to Virginia's price-gouging investigation have cleared most of the hundreds of gasoline retailers named in consumer complaints in the fall, a state official said last week.

"A majority of them were found to be unfounded," said Gordon Hickey, spokesman for Gov. Tim Kaine.

That's no surprise to Irene Leech, a consumer advocate and professor at Virginia Tech, who said Virginia's anti-gouging legislation is weak.

"This is exactly the outcome I expected," Leech said.

Fifty-dollar fill-ups, lines at gas stations and furious consumers were commonplace five months ago in the aftermath of a run-up in retail gasoline prices attributed to Hurricane Ike, which disrupted Gulf Coast oil operations in early September.

Prices for regular unleaded fuel, which had hovered around $3.50 the previous month, soared to $4.99 at a Giles County station and $4.63 at one in Salem. There were reports of some stations charging more than $5.

Roanoke's average price set a record of $4.14 on Sept. 15 and surged above the state and national averages in a rare departure from its typical pattern of coming in just below those benchmarks.

Virginia asked consumers to report gouging by gasoline retailers.

"We will aggressively pursue unscrupulous operators charging excessive prices," Kaine said in a prepared statement.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services received 1,115 complaints with sufficient information for review, officials said at the time.

Of the total, there were 104 from Salem, 61 from Roanoke or Roanoke County, 45 from the Lynchburg area, 22 from Danville, 15 from Blacksburg and Christiansburg and 10 from Martinsville.

Asked about the possibility of prosecutions in Virginia, a spokesman for Attorney General Bob McDonnell said he knew of "several ongoing matters" stemming from September's record-setting price surge. No one has been charged, he said.

"There is a process underway," agency spokesman Tucker Martin said in an e-mail.

But while no one has been prosecuted in Virginia, various other states have brought charges and won settlements.

Florida expects legal action against gasoline retailers to net $40,000 for a Red Cross emergency fund and a similar amount in consumer reimbursements.

Kentucky collected $107,500 from seven stations. Kentucky investigators, after reviewing wholesale and retail price data from the stations, determined that some stations collected a profit of $1 a gallon, Kentucky officials said in a news release. The usual profit for a gasoline retailer is perhaps 10 cents a gallon.

Alabama, South Carolina and North Carolina were taking or had taken legal action against gasoline retailers suspected of gouging consumers.

Michael O'Connor, who directs the Virginia Petroleum, Convenience and Grocery Association, was asked if he believes Virginia gas station owners behaved responsibly.

"Absolutely," he said.

O'Connor said the storm triggered a temporary suspension of many Gulf Coast petroleum operations. With little new gasoline entering the system, major oil companies rationed the existing supply by raising prices. Retailers passed those increases on to consumers, O'Connor said.

Those effects were pronounced in Virginia, which depends on the Colonial and Plantation pipelines to deliver gas from Gulf Coast refineries.

O'Connor said that, if a retailer can justify its pump price with an invoice showing what the retailer paid for the gasoline, and the mark-up is reasonable, he did not gouge under Virginia law.

Leech said part of the reason there have not been any prosecutions in this state is the lack of a good definition for gouging in the law. Another problem, in her view, is what she called the pro-business philosophy of Virginia's elected officials.

"We have the law so that there is an appearance of doing something -- but it's not likely that it will net results very often," Leech said.

"My cynical perspective these days is that if it was real consumer protection, the law wouldn't be on Virginia's books. Our businesses would have told decision-makers it was anti-business and it would never have been approved."

Martin said McDonnell, the attorney general, asked lawmakers to broaden the existing anti-gouging law. The proposal was one of several proposed expansions of power that the Virginia General Assembly took up. All of the measures were defeated or stalled.