Orem firm's Web maps help customers find cheapest gas

OREM — When Hurricane Rita hit, closing more oil refineries and offshore drilling platforms in addition to those closed by Katrina, consumers were told to brace for gas prices to jump as high as $4, maybe $5 per gallon.

However, gas prices have held fairly steady in Rita's wake, and, in some cases, have even dropped slightly from post-Katrina highs.

Mark Olsen, an Orem-based Web developer, said part of the reason for falling prices is that consumers are fighting back.

"We think the reason behind (decreasing prices) is that we were already being gouged, and now that people are using the Web to find lower prices, oil companies are realizing it," Olsen said.

Olsen works for Orbizon, a company that recently launched mapgasprices.com, an interactive site that allows users to bring up a street map of any area in the United States that shows local gas stations and their price for a gallon of regular unleaded.

The site automatically lists the five cheapest and five most expensive prices in the area, as well as the five closest stations to the given address.

Olsen is aware of other sites with similar functions but said mapgasprices.com has a simplicity that other sites lack.

"We're the most interactive, most easy-to-use site," he said. "If you go to AAA or Gas Buddy, those sites are just tedious."

Orbizon's chief source of information for the site is Oil Price and Information Services, which provides a daily update of gas prices for more than 85,000 locations in the United States.

Olsen said Orbizon has to pay for the information, and although the price is reasonable, he said, it's "not cheap." As a result, mapgasprices.com has some advertising space on the bottom of the page.

The site allows users to add stations and update prices for stations not covered in the OPIS information, as well.

But not all gas Web sites are sold on the OPIS information. Owners of one major site, gasbuddy.com, say the OPIS information, which is collected from credit card receipts, is often outdated.

"By the time the information actually gets released, it's two or three days old," said Jason Toews, co-founder of gasbuddy.com. "Old information isn't really useful to anyone."

Toews' site does not post information that is more than 48 hours old. However, he said that policy rarely results in coverage holes, because the site uses a large group of gas-price spotters, and prices are regularly updated.

"It is the timeliness and extensiveness of our site that set us apart," he said.

Petroleum-industry watchers say Web sites that lead consumers to cheap gas are a good concept, but people shouldn't think that a station with a slightly higher price is trying to gouge its customers.