CONSUMERS — Among those who stand to lose the most are consumers, who spend more each week on gas.

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The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

Gasoline prices went up again yesterday, breaking a new record that was set only last week.

The average price, as determined by the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, was $3.859 a gallon, up 12 cents from last week. The price is based on a survey of local stations.

Gasoline has gone up a total of 75 cents since the beginning of the year. A year ago, the average price was $3.069 a gallon.

This seemingly endless rise in gasoline prices has created both winners and losers.

The winners, of course, have been the large oil companies that made more money last year than they’ve ever made. The total sales of just one of those companies is larger than the gross national product of several nations.

And it’s not hard to guess who’s in the losing column.

U.S. motorists buy about 8.8 million barrels, or 370 million gallons, of gasoline every day. With gasoline prices about 79 cents a gallon higher than they were a year ago, Americans are spending an extra $292 million more each day for gas. That amounts to an additional $106.6 billion a year spent on fuel.

Here’s a closer look at those who are hurt by higher gasoline prices, as well as those who benefit.

LOSERS

Consumers: “Clearly, the consumer loses,” said Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America.

Households are spending a lot more on gasoline than they have in the past.

In 2006, the average family in the Northeast spent $1,910, or 3.9 percent of its annual budget, on gasoline and motor oil, according to the most recent figures available from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2001, by contrast, the average family spent $1,086, or 2.6 percent of all expenditures, on gasoline and motor oil.

The BLS defines the Northeast as the six New England states, plus New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. The figures are from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which provides information on income and buying habits of American consumers.

Cooper said that if you include costs for heating and cooking, household energy costs will average about $5,300 in 2008, which is more than double the $2,600 average in 2002.

“That’s a huge bite out of the household budget,” he said. “People just don’t have the income to pay their bills, or they certainly don’t have the money for the discretionary things they love to do.”

High fuel costs are also having an indirect impact on households in the form of higher food prices, Cooper said.

The agriculture industry consumes about 7 percent of all energy used in the United States, he said.

Energy prices affect food producers’ costs for fertilizer, chemicals, fuel, food processing, marketing, and retailing, said Joseph Glauber, chief economist for the United States Department of Agriculture, in testimony before a congressional committee earlier this month.

For every 10 percent increase in energy costs, retail food prices could increase by as much as 0.75 percent, if those costs are fully passed on to consumers, Glauber said.

Cities and Towns: “Everything that affects you and I as residents is being magnified a thousand times by cities and towns,” said Dan Beardsley, executive director of the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns.

High fuel prices are busting budgets that were set a year ago, when gasoline was 75 cents a gallon cheaper.

Today’s record-high diesel fuel prices are pushing up the operating costs of a municipality’s vehicles: school buses, garbage and recycling collections vehicles and maintenance trucks.

Beardsley said school bus companies that have contracts with cities and towns are seeking to reopen those contracts to reflect the higher costs those companies are seeing.

The increased fuel costs come at a time when cities and towns are receiving tens of millions of dollars less in state aid, he said.

State government:

Like the cities and towns, the State of Rhode Island is paying more to operate maintenance and other state vehicles.

But the state is taking a hit in the form of reduced tax revenue. As gasoline prices have gone up, people have been cutting back on their gasoline purchases.

And with less gasoline being bought, the state’s gasoline tax revenues have declined by millions of dollars this year.

The state tax on each gallon of gasoline is fixed at $0.31 cents.

For the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, the state’s net gasoline tax revenue was $113.3 million, which is $4.2 million, or 3.6 percent less than was what collected in the same period last year, and about $6.1 million, or 5.2 percent, less than gasoline tax collections in the first 10 months of the 2005-2006 fiscal year, according to figures provided by the state’s Division of Taxation.

The biggest losing entities are the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, which is allotted about 19 cents of the 31-cent gasoline tax; and the Rhode Island Public Transportation Authority, which is allotted 7.25 cents.

WINNERS

Oil Companies: As you might have guessed, the biggest winners from high gasoline prices are oil companies.

As the price of crude oil doubled over the course of 2007, some energy companies took in billions in extra revenue and set new records for profits.

For example, Exxon Mobil reported profits of $11.66 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, an increase of 14 percent over the same quarter a year earlier. For all of last year, profits rose to $40.6 billion, a 3-percent increase.

The company broke its own records for the highest quarterly and yearly profits ever recorded by a U.S. company.

Exxon Mobil’s sales for the year, over $404 billion, exceeded the gross domestic product of all but the 24 richest countries in the world, the International Herald Tribune reported in February.

But the oil companies that are owned by countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, are positioned to make even higher profit margins, according to James Williams, an economist with EnergyEconomist.com, an energy consulting firm in London, Ark.

“National oil companies, and in particular the countries that have the oil, are really the ones that are making out like bandits,” Williams said.

One of them, he said, state-owned Saudi Aramco, is the world largest oil producer. It supplies more than 10 percent of the world’s oil demand, according to a profile of the company on Yahoo! Finance. The company handles practically all aspects of bringing its huge reserves of crude oil to the retail market.

As much money as Exxon Mobil makes, the company has to pay royalties to the countries that hold the mineral rights to the oil it drills. Williams said that as the price of crude has gone up, many of these countries have increased their royalties to take a bigger share of the money.

Not all energy companies are profiting from the run-up in gasoline prices, he said. For example, companies such as Valero that only refine and sell gasoline are not making much money right now.

That’s because the price they pay for light sweet crude oil right now is only 9 cents less than the per-gallon price of gasoline being sold on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

“Nine cents isn’t much to get for refining gasoline,” he said.

Credit card companies: Another big winner from high fuel prices has been credit card companies. They have seen a double benefit, said Jeff Lenard, vice president of communications for the National Association of Convenience Stores, or NACS. The Alexandria, Va.-based trade group represents the convenience store industry, which sells about 79 percent of all gasoline in the United States.

First, as gasoline prices rise more people tend to use credit cards to fill up their tanks. Historically, about 60 to 70 percent of gasoline sales are paid for by credit card, Lenard said.

“When prices are high, it’s not unusual for 80 percent to 90 percent of all purchased to be paid by plastic,” he said.

Secondly, credit card companies are getting more money in transaction fees from the gas station owners. For every gasoline purchase with a charge card, the credit card company charges the station owner a fee that amounts to about 2.5 percent of the sale, Lenard said.

So every time gasoline goes up, the credit card companies get more in fees. In some cases, those companies get more per gallon than the station selling the gas, he said.

Total credit card fees paid by the convenience store industry was $7.6 billion last year, Lenard said, compared to $6.6 billion in 2006.

Over the same period, Lenard said industry profits declined to $3.4 billion in 2007, compared to $4.8 billion in 2006.

Discount stores:

As the price of fuel and gasoline go up, shoppers are being more careful about where they shop, according to some analysts.

Low-price retailers such as Costco Wholesale Corp. Wal-Mart Stores and TJX Cos. reported better-than-expected sales earlier this month.

An analyst for Morningstar.com is recommending Wal-Mart stock because the chain continues to attract shoppers even in tough economic times.

“Even consumers who haven’t been directly affected by falling home values or job losses are taking a more cautious eye to their spending,” wrote Kimberly Picciola, in a Morningstar report released March 28.

“With a large percentage of its revenue coming from nondiscretionary goods and its recent return to being the low-price leader, we think Wal-Mart’s registers will be ringing despite a slowdown in overall consumption,” Picciola wrote.

tbarmann@projo.com