creative incentives that encourage gas stations to offer lower prices for gas.

Price gauging where I live is common practice at the pump. You can drive 10 miles north or 15 miles south and get gas as much as $.25 cheaper than in the city. There is no competition among gas stations, almost as if they are colluding to drive the price up. Here, all the stations have the same price (in a city of about 100k residents) and if one of them raises the price, all over town the gas goes up to that price. In a city of similar size, 45 miles south of here, gas prices can have a difference from the lowest to the highest around $.50. Here that difference is never more than $.03 and we are always just a little higher than whatever the national average is.