Charge the fence! — gas less than $2/gallon

An Escondido gas station’s price drop yesterday (January 28) means San Diego motorists can join the rest of the country in buying gas under two dollars a gallon.

On January 28, at 7:00 p.m., the APEX station at 1602 East 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 6:00 a.m. on January 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.