SAN DIEGO – With gasoline and diesel prices hovering near record prices, an alternative fuel station on El Cajon Boulevard may turn a profit for the first time in two years, it was reported Saturday.

Pearson Fuels is now selling nearly as much ethanol as regular gasoline, but the ethanol at $3.69 per gallon is 83 cents cheaper, the Los Angeles Times reported. And that kind of bargain is pulling over people like Jesse Garcia, whose 2008 Chevrolet Avalanche is equipped with a FlexFuel engine that enables it to burn both.

When Garcia pumps 16.2 gallons of ethanol into his tank, he saves $13.45 over the price of gasoline, The Times reported.

Station co-owner Mike Lewis hasn't finished crunching numbers from June sales, but it may turn out to be the station's first profitable month in two years.

“If it is, it will be because of ethanol,” he told the newspaper.

Pearson Fuels was the first fueling station in the nation to sell ethanol and the first in San Diego to sell biodiesel – a mixture of traditional diesel fuel and vegetable oil. The station also sells two kinds of natural gas and propane.

Lewis is trying to spread the gospel, using state grant money to sign up 12 independently owned gas stations to install ethanol tanks and pumps. The first station to take advantage of a deal Lewis worked out opened last month in Carlsbad, and Lewis hopes to start selling ethanol to a new station each month until the end of the year.

The state is home to about half a million cars that can burn ethanol, but there are few ethanol pumps to serve those vehicles.