The sign high over the half-dozen fuel pumps reads LUKOIL in big red letters. But if any of the customers were aware that is the name of Russia’s second largest oil company, it was not keeping them away from this Brooklyn service station.
What did sway the customers were the black numbers under the LUKOIL sign announcing that regular gas here was going for $3.95 a gallon at the start of Monday. The surrounding stations were charging as much as $4.29.
The price is determined by Lukoil, which adopted this marketing strategy long before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. The drawing power of a few cents a gallon will likely remain enough to keep the customers coming unless the continuing savagery in Ukraine prompts New York to revoke the permits of the city’s three Lukoil franchises. The Newark, New Jersey, city council has voted to shut down the three dozen Lukoil stations there.
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The co-owner of the lone Brooklyn franchise, Vinny Lasorsa, told the Daily Beast that his station had received a few nasty phone calls about the Russian connection. He and his partner, Dominic Amatulli, are immigrants and he has a standard response.
“We are Italian and all American,” he said.
He added that the gas they sell comes from the same American refineries as the stuff peddled by other brands in the area. The price difference had a steady stream of cars pulling up to his pumps and nobody could be heard talking about Putin or Ukraine.
He lost some of that advantage in the afternoon, when Lukoil notified him that a fuel delivery scheduled for later in the day would be accompanied by a hike of 30 cents per gallon. Lasorsa wrote the new prices on a white scrap of paper and instructed an employee named Ali to enter them into a computer in the office.
A worker at a Lukoil station changes the price at the pump.
Michael Daly/The Daily BeastEven as Ali entered the new numbers with an extended index finger, a small television on the wall delivered split-screen footage of the war in Ukraine and of White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. She was saying that President Biden was not ready to go along with a ban on Russian oil, which comprises around 8 percent of all our liquid fuel imports.
“No decision has been made at this point,” Psaki was saying. “I would note what the president is most focused on is ensuring we are continuing to take steps to deliver punishing economic consequences while taking all actions necessary to limit the impact of prices at the gas pump.”
Such an embargo is supported by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress from both parties who believe that a moral stand against a tyrant’s slaughter of innocents is well worth a few more pennies for a gallon of gas. Biden would come around by Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, at the Brooklyn Lukoil on Monday, Ali kept entering the hike for fuel that is no more Russian than that sold at other pumps in America. One difference is that all the station’s proceeds go to Lukoil, which then pays Lasorsa and his partner a commission.
That is exactly the same arrangement the partners had when it was a Getty Station. After Getty was acquired by Lukoil in 1981, Lasorsa and his partner just kept on working.
“I’m 71 and I’m still pumping gas,” he said.
Lasorsa briefly shut down the station while Ali finished entering the price hike in the computer and changed the numbers above the pumps and below the big LUKOIL sign.
The station was not quite ready to reopen when Lasorsa made an exception for a longtime customer who works in a nursing home. She was followed by an off-duty nurse named Ottawi Gibbons who pulled up in a red pickup truck with a child in the back.
“Can I get the $3.95?” she asked.
She was just a few minutes too late. Lasorsa said the price was beyond his control and had already been entered in the computer.
One consolation was that she was able to just sit in the car while she paid the higher price. This is one station where you do not have to pump your own gas.
“The only place in Brooklyn,” Lasorsa said.
As she waited, Gibbons was asked by The Daily Beast if the war in Ukraine made her hesitant to patronize a Lukoil station.
“I’m a nurse,” she said. “I work with Russians.”
She was asked for her thoughts on the conflict.
“Why are they fighting?” she wondered aloud.
She was told that Putin had invaded Ukraine.
“So it's about power,” she said.
Lasorsa finished putting 5.8 gallons in her car for $25.
“I’m going to have to start walking,” she said.
She drove off and the next car pulled up to the pump where gas remained a few pennies cheaper. Lasorsa said he expects the surrounding stations in the neighborhood—Mobil, Shell, BP—to institute their own new hikes. And the black numbers will continue to be a big draw despite the big LUKOIL sign.
