Proposed Pay-Before-You-Pump Law is unnecessary

I am against instituting a pay-before-you-pump law. While I typically pay at the pump with a credit card because it is convenient, I think making it mandatory to pay for gas before you pump will bring Halifax one more step to becoming a "big" city, where gas station attendants sit in locked booths behind bullet-proof glass, and we lose a bit more of our humanity in Halifax.

There were apparently 720 gasoline thefts that were reported to HRM police in 2008. While I am sure there were more than 720 instances where people drove away without paying for their gas since probably not all thefts were reported to police, this seems like a minuscule number, versus the number of transactions at gas stations in HRM last year.

According to the Chronicle Herald online, there are 420 gas stations in Nova Scotia. Let's say half of those are in HRM. That means for 210 or so gas stations in HRM, there are an average of 3 drive-offs every year (720 drive-offs divided by 210 or so gas stations). In a Newfoundland government report, the annual average sales volume for Canadian gas stations is 2,200,000 litres. This is a figure from the 1990's but let's just say it's about the same, since low-volume stations have been closing over the past decade. Let's say the average drive-off is a 50 litre fill-up. For a gas station to lose 150 litres of gas per year on an average annual sales volume of 2,200,000 litres is inconsequential.

Even if we use the numbers that were quoted in a recent allnovascotia.com article about Wayne Pace losing $100/week from his two gas stations, that is $50/week per station. Or, about the 50 litre average drive-off figure that I used earlier. Based on the average 2,200,000 litres a year figure, this $50 loss results in about 50 litres out of over 42,000 litres sold every week. That is 0.0012% of sales volume. Granted, the 50 litres that were stolen represent about twenty times that amount in terms of sales the station has to make to pay for the stolen gas, at a 5% profit margin. That still makes this a 2.4% profit problem, which has been solved with provincial gas price regulation, which has been proven to increase gas prices about 2 cents per litre, or about 2.4% of today's $0.85/litre price.

All businesses have losses due to theft from retail customers, whether it is shoplifting, non-payment after receiving the good or service, or stopping payment on a cheque that was written in advance of receiving the good. If someone wants to steal from you, they will find a way. Punishing the literal 99.9% of gas customers who pay for their gas seems heavy-handed to reduce a problem that is common to all businesses, regardless of their industry.

If rural gas stations have less of a problem with gas theft, then the pressure for them to upgrade their pumps to take credit card payment is less than it would be for urban stations, who reportedly have a bigger gas theft problem. This reduces the argument for the legislation, since the station owners who cannot afford the pump upgrade are apparently not as significant victims of this crime.

In my opinion, there is already plenty of legislation for gas stations. Adding another law to control consumer behaviour is unnecessary. If gas stations provide the pay-at-the-pump option as a convenience to their customer and it also reduces their loss due to theft, then it is a win-win. If the station owner chooses to not provide that service, then they reap the results of that business decision.

This is not even mentioning the legislation that gasoline is sold by volume, based on 15 degrees Celsius. Check out my post on that issue from last February.