After meeting with fuel retailers and distributors Thursday, Attorney General Jon Bruning said he is confident they aren’t to blame for high prices at the pump. “I’ve looked at the numbers, I’ve looked at the details, and I don’t think anybody’s price gouging,” Bruning said.

Like other attorneys general across the country, Bruning has vowed to aggressively pursue allegations that retailers are taking advantage of short supplies caused by Hurricane Katrina by charging exorbitant prices.

His office has received about 300 such complaints since he called on the public to keep an eye out for gouging. Thus far, just one — an allegation that an Omaha station charged about $5 a gallon — has been deemed worthy of investigation.

Katrina knocked out more than 10 percent of the country’s fuel-refining capacity and cut off key distribution lines. As prices climbed, so did demand among consumers worried that a severe shortage was imminent and that prices might not peak.

“I’m convinced a lot of this is media-driven hysteria,” Bruning said of high prices, which have begun to drop. Gas prices in Lincoln Thursday afternoon hovered near $3 a gallon for regular unleaded, down from an average of about $3.25 late Wednesday.

Among those who attended the meeting called by Bruning was Tim Keigher, executive director of the Nebraska Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, and John Hergert of Hergert Oil. Bruning said he has also been in contact with others, including Mark Whitehead of Whitehead Oil. The two oil companies own many convenience stores in Lincoln and surrounding areas where fuel is sold.

They shared their cost figures, which Bruning said showed the margins between what they paid for fuel at the wholesale level and then charged motorists were exceptionally narrow. Last year, the average, national margin was just less than 13 cents per gallon, according to Jeff Lenard of the National Association of Convenience Stores.

Bruning said margins in the Lincoln area, according to the figures he was shown, have been between 4 cents and 5 cents over the past month. On some of the days following Hurricane Katrina, he said, retailers sold fuel for less than what they paid for it.

“They were not making money everyday,” Bruning said. “I have complete faith after seeing these numbers the retailers were not making additional money from the hurricane.”

But still unanswered is why Nebraska saw a sharper jump in gas prices from Aug. 30 to Tuesday — 52 cents per gallon, according to AAA and the Department of Transportation — than any state in the Midwest. On Wednesday, Bruning spokeswoman Regan Anson said, “The attorney general will get to the bottom of it.”

As of late Thursday afternoon, Bruning said he had no answers but would keep looking. About that same time, he was sent another complaint about fuel prices — from Lincoln Mayor Coleen Seng.

Her research showed that Lincoln gas prices have been higher than in other parts of the state.

“A comparison of Lincoln, Omaha and statewide gas prices … confirms what Lincoln residents already know: gas prices in Lincoln are typically higher than they are elsewhere,” Seng said in her letter to Bruning.

City Councilman Dan Marvin has also entered the fray, asking Bruning why pump prices seem to rise commensurately with hikes in gasoline futures contracts, but don’t drop at an equal rate when the futures prices dip.

On a national level, the story of recent, slim margins and resulting lower profits told to Bruning Thursday tends to hold true, Lenard said. So retailers usually do the same thing when prices, as they are now, begin to drop: widen the gap between what they paid for gas and what they sold it for to make up.

“Margins can expand when prices go down,” he said, “as retailers try to capture what they lost when prices went up.”

Reach Nate Jenkins at 473-7223 or njenkins@journalstar.com