Escondido station first in SoCal with gas under $2

That's the gas price as of Friday, Jan. 27 at APEX, Escondido.

An Escondido gas station’s price drop yesterday (Jan. 28) means San Diego motorists can join the rest of the country in buying gas under two dollars a gallon. Story will be update later tonight.

At 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28, the APEX station at 1602 E Valley Parkway in Escondido became the first station in Southern California to lower its price to $1.99 a gallon. The last time San Diegans saw gas under two dollars was in January 2009.

The gas-price-reporting website gasbuddy.com reported the next lowest price in San Diego County was a 7-Eleven on Otay Mesa Road in the South Bay, 36 cents a gallon higher.

 The owner of APEX LLC, Gregory Cunningham, said from his Orange County office that this is not a promotional price. “The wholesale gas market is dropping quickly,” he said.

Having been closed for weeks for a remodel, the final testing on the new gas pumps was done throughout the day. “As soon as the fence came down, the cars started pulling in,” said the station’s general manager, Brian Cunningham.

By 6 a.m. Friday, Jan. 29, after the Escondido station’s $1.99 price was posted on gasbuddy.com, a San Bernardino County station, Anthem Oil in Ontario, matched it.

“It will be interesting to see what our competitors will do today,” said APEX’s Gregory Cunningham.

(Ken Harrison is a native of Cardiff-by-the-Sea. He was very active in community politics in his younger years as past president of the Cardiff Town Council. A former radio talk show host, Ken now attends Politicians Anonymous and writes about North County coastal community issues. this story originally appears in The Reader and is being re-printed by permission. For more from Ken, visit http://www.sandiegoreader.com/staff/ken-harrison/)

2 Comments on "Escondido station first in SoCal with gas under $2"

  1. I Don’t Think So. 1605 Cactus Rd, San Diego, CA 92154 Has Been Having Gas $1.99 For About 3 Weeks Now.

    • I was just there and will post another story later. This is a special formation ending Thursday. When you saw that Otay Mesa price, it was during the week they had the same promo there, and not in effect currently.

Leave a comment