Why a NYC Gas Station Is Selling Gas for $1.98
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Digital Vision/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Manhattan drivers are hoping nobody shoots JR — at least not Monday.
As a promotional stunt kicking off its new season, the TV series Dallas opened a Ewing Energies gasoline station on Manhattan’s West Side that’s selling gas at $1.98 a gallon for one day only.
In a video release, Ewing Energies head John Ross Ewing tells viewers, “I’m an oil man — third generation Ewing. I make my fortune on supply and demand. You demand, I supply.”
The price of gasoline, he says, is too high. As a member of the most powerful (albeit fictional) oil family in America, he says, he is in a unique position to do something about it.
“On February 24th,” he announced in the video, “Ewing Energies will open its flagship service station and drastically reduce gasoline prices.”
Some people, he says, might call this undercutting the competition. Some might call it predatory pricing. “I just call it good business,” the fictional oil baron says.
A disclaimer to the video says the station will impose a limit of 26 gallons per person and per vehicle, and that the promotion will be in effect Monday until 8 p.m., or as long as the supply of gas lasts.
The average price for a non-Ewing gallon, nationwide, is about $3.40, but in Manhattan it ranges from $3.67 to $4.19 a gallon.
Cheap gas isn’t the series’ only stunt. A new line of 4-year-old, 80-proof J.R. Ewing bourbon will go on sale in March.
Copyright 2014 ABC News Radio