The price of regular gasoline fell below $3 yesterday at several O'ahu stations, with many of their competitors promising to follow suit today.

For the first time since Hawai'i imposed the nation's only limits on gasoline prices Sept. 1, consumers are seeing a significant drop in costs. With the wholesale price fixed, dealers are left to compete for customers. Station owners that kept prices high yesterday watched their competition reel in all the business.

Barney Robinson, who owns two Chevron stations, saw cars and trucks lining up at the Kahala Shell, which dropped its regular price more than 40 cents a gallon around 9:30 a.m. yesterday — to $2.98.

Although Robinson may still have hundreds of gallons of higher-priced fuel that he bought from wholesalers last week, he plans to sell his gasoline at $2.99 per gallon today.

"I'll have to bust out my old number 2," Robinson said as he prepared to change the prices on his sign. "It's been collecting cobwebs on the shelf the last six weeks."

The drop in prices could ease pressure on the architects of the gasoline price cap. The law adopted by the Democrat-led Legislature links Hawai'i prices to those on the Mainland. Proponents have had difficulty defending the law in part because it took effect just as hurricanes on the Gulf Coast pushed Mainland prices to record highs. Now, with prices on the Gulf and elsewhere falling, rates in Hawai'i should continue to fall.

The Hawai'i Public Utilities Commission likely will announce tomorrow another decline in prices for next week. The PUC's weekly announcements on the adjusted price cap have become a staple of consumer life in the Islands.

As prices are set to go up or down each week, drivers have been either eagerly filling up or squeezing by on the last remaining drops of fuel — like many did last week.

Robinson's employees yesterday helped push cars that ran out of gas into his Chevron station near the Honolulu Airport.

One driver had pushed his Honda Prelude down busy Nimitz Highway and through an intersection trying to get to Robinson's station.

"How dangerous is that? He's going to get hit by a car. He's going to slip and fall. This is stupid," Robinson said.

"Look at what everybody's going through. We're all trying to feel our way through this crazy law."

An hour after Kahala Shell dropped its prices, Gayle Boc of Hawai'i Kai pulled her 1993 Nissan Quest into the back of the long line of vehicles gassing up.

"I used to fill up once a week at least," Boc said. "Now I've curtailed my driving. It used to cost me $20 to fill up, now it's $39 or $40."

Boc, who sells car cleaning products at the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet, appreciates the problem of gas station owners who are often overstocked with fuel they bought at higher prices the week before.

"Unfortunately, if they had to pay the going rate and got stuck with it, I know how that is," Boc said. "But some of these station owners just aren't willing to drop their price."

Burt Chinen, who owns Burt's Union Service on North School Street, was selling regular gas at $3.45 per gallon yesterday. This morning, he plans to lower the price to $2.99 even though he'll take a loss on whatever fuel he has left from last week's deliveries.

Chinen is scheduled to receive a fresh delivery of fuel at the new, lower, wholesale price sometime this morning.

"Because the drop is such a considerable drop — 40 cents — I can't afford to lose 40 cents for every gallon I pump," Chinen said. Today, "at least I'll have the majority of the expensive gas gone."

Across the street, one of Chinen's competitors — Kapalama Chevron — had dropped its price of regular to $2.99 per gallon yesterday.

"Of course we did," said Bob Swartz, who owns the Kapalama station and two other Chevron stations in Kane'ohe and Kailua. "The answer is very simple. I was trained that when the price goes up, the price goes up. When the price goes down, the price goes down."

Bill Green, the former owner and now consultant to Kahala Shell, blamed "everything that's happening because of that idiotic (gas cap) law. It's a shame we have to put up with this because a bunch of (people) thought they know more than the people that are in business."

Kahala Shell was able to drop prices more than 40 cents yesterday morning only because the station didn't have much of last week's fuel left, Green said.

"We were able to run our tanks as dry as we can," Green said. "That gave us an opportunity to lower our price right away, which most people weren't able to do. The result is that we've had a traffic jam most all day."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.