Every week, Gina Alcos spends at least an hour and a half driving from her home in Ewa Beach in West Oahu to her job at the Ala Moana Hotel, where she’s worked for more than 30 years.

She hasn’t been able to secure a consistent five-day-a-week schedule since the pandemic, which has been tough on her family’s wallet. But now she’s dealing with another budget blow: gas prices are skyrocketing and the cost of filling up the tank on her Toyota Highlander leapt from $45 a couple of months ago to as much as $70 this week.

The increase has Alcos choosing to stay home more to save money and holding off on a planned trip to watch her son play baseball on the mainland.

“We have to make sacrifices to make sure we can cover our bills,” she said.

Crude oil prices have shot up globally, in part due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Prices were already rising and inflation was up prior to the war, but now Russia’s aggression has prompted President Joe Biden to ban Russian oil imports.

Like other parts of the world, the Pacific region is feeling the effects of higher prices — in some ways more than others. Hawaii is the most petroleum-dependent U.S. state and residents consume about 12 times more energy than the state produces, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The state and other Pacific islands depend heavily on shipping to access food and other essential goods.

Claudia Rapkoch, spokeswoman for the Hawaii State Energy Office, said in the short term there are small things residents can do to save money on gas, such as making sure their tire pressure isn’t low and choosing to take TheBus instead of driving.

“Hawaii is a small energy market in the grand scheme of things,” Rapkoch said. “We’re not in a position to do anything but accept what the market will bear.”

“The long term solution really lies in separating ourselves from the global market in the first place,” she said.

Ripple Effects

Rapkoch said the increase in the price for crude oil affects gasoline for cars, fuel oil that’s used for electricity, diesel and jet fuel, costs that ripple out to many industries. 

Keoni Wagner, spokesman for the shipping company Matson, said the company plans to respond to higher prices by increasing its fuel surcharge by 7.5% next month for Hawaii, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.

“Oil prices have been on the rise since like December when the potential for war in Europe became news and now that the war has started, since the war prices have escalated dramatically,” Wagner said.

Wagner said the majority of Matson’s customers are retail companies that ship everything from clothing to building materials and food to the islands.

The South Pacific isn’t included in that particular Matson rate increase, but South Pacific nations are similarly bracing for rising costs. On Thursday, the Fiji Times reported the country’s Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum warned that Russia’s war on Ukraine could drive price increases over the next six months to a year.

Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, an associate professor at the University of Hawaii Center for Pacific Island Studies, thinks it makes sense that U.S.-controlled Pacific islands are experiencing gas price jumps first but expects non-U.S. countries and territories to follow.

“It’s going to have a real everyday impact on people’s ability to keep their lights on,” Kabutaulaka said.

USA Today reported that nationwide, the national average price of gasoline exceeded $4.17 this week, an historic high, and it has gone up since then. Gas prices were already higher than average in U.S. territories like Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. In some parts of the Marianas, gas prices exceeded $7 this week, the Saipan Tribune reported.

Motorists aren’t the only ones affected by the increases. Hawaiian Electric said Thursday that Oahu residents should expect to see about a 10% increase in their monthly electric bills, while Maui and Hawaii island residents could see their bills increase as much as 20%.

“We hope this is the peak and that by summer we could see some relief,” Joe Viola, vice president at Hawaiian Electric, said in a press release. “There’s a lot of uncertainty and if the international situation remains in turmoil, the price could surge higher.”

What Can Be Done

University of Hawaii professor Makena Coffman says the high gas prices provide a reason for Hawaii to move closer to its goal of relying 100% on renewable energy. That means everything from improving federal policies that govern vehicle gas emissions to making electric vehicles and other options more available to the average resident.

The latter sounds good to Waikiki resident Jeanine Jones. She used to live on the mainland where she and her husband owned two cars and drove 70 miles each way for work, filling up their respective gas tanks every week.

Now they live close enough to their offices that Jones alternates driving with biking while her husband walks. Because they drive so infrequently, they only fill up on gas every three or four weeks.

On Tuesday, Jones’ husband filled up the gas tank of their Volkswagen Tiguan. A month ago, they paid an average of $40 to fill the tank — now, it’s $65. But because she drives so infrequently the change was more of an inconvenience than anything.

“We are so thankful that we are in a position where we don’t have a commute and we don’t have a reliance on a vehicle so that the gas prices aren’t really affecting our daily budget,” she said. “I definitely feel for people who have to drive from Ewa into town every day.”

She wishes that the city would invest more in safe bike lanes and electric car charging stations, and make more progress on its Complete Streets plan to enable more residents to feel more comfortable relying on alternative transportation.

But not everyone can afford an electric car. Alcos wanted to buy an electric vehicle but couldn’t find one with a monthly payment that she could stomach. She wishes the U.S. would consider drilling for more oil within the country instead of relying so much on foreign imports. She was shocked to find out recently that Russia provided as much as 30% of Hawaii’s oil until the state stopped accepting imports.

Rapkoch from the Hawaii Energy Office said there are many policies that could help improve Hawaii’s use of renewable energy, including legislation aimed at making electric vehicles more affordable for low and moderate income folks.

“There will always be market forces that Hawaii can’t control,” she said. “The most efficient and cheapest amount of energy is that gallon of gas that you never had to create in the first place.”