U.S. consumers who can’t find gas to put in their vehicles are still feeling the effects of this season’s hurricanes. No Guarantees
The Southeast is the only region of the country with no major gas storage or oil refining capacity, and it pumps all of its gasoline in by pipeline. As the Gulf continues recovering from recent storms, those pipelines are not operating at normal capacity. A spokesman for AAA Carolinas, Tom Crosby, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that more than two-thirds of Gulf Coast oil refineries are back online, however.
Energy experts and industry officials say it will likely be two more weeks before the shortages stop.
For now, some drivers say they’re just staying put. “I don’t have any assurance that I’m gonna even be able to get more than $30 worth of gas,” Wendy Stewart, who had to postpone a long trip, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “How am I gonna get out of town and drive five hours on $30 of gas? I can’t do it.”
Gas Tank Drivers Struggling
Nearly a month passed with low supply coming from refineries. Panic buying then began contributing to the shortage that suppliers are now having trouble correcting. Independent gas stations in particular are struggling for gas because their purchases aren’t made on contractual arrangements; they are cut first in the event of shortages.
While timing might be making the gas shortage difficult, Bruce Bullock of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University told The Tennessean that the situation could have been worse. If storms had hit further down the coastline, refineries could have been out for nine months to a year.
Some regions of the country are less vulnerable to fuel troubles than others. Many Midwest states have their own refineries and can produce gas locally. The Northeast can import gasoline through New York harbor and store it in tanks in New Jersey.
Related Topic: 1973 Oil Crisis
U.S. refiners produced approximately 90 percent of the gas used in the United States during 2007. While the United States is the third largest crude oil producer in the world, less than 35 percent of the crude oil that refiners processed was produced in the United States. Learn about the steps taken to get gasoline from the refinery to the consumers at the Energy Information Administration Web site.
130 Georgia Gas Stations Get subpoenaed
The state has received 1,300 complaints of gas gouging and has subpoenaed sales records from 130 gas stations to determine if they illegally jacked up prices in the wake of Hurricane Ike.
Complaints have been coming in steadily to the governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs since Sept. 15, the Monday after Gov. Sonny Perdue signed the executive order enacting Georgia’s gas-gouging statute to protect consumers from stations illegally raising up prices.
Bill Cloud of the Office of Consumer Affairs said it will take several weeks to prove stations were illegally gouging consumers on prices.
He said his office had one report Tuesday that an Acworth station was charging $8.82 a gallon, but that report hasn’t been verified.
The agency learned a lot from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when there was a run on gas because of fears of fuel shortages. Cloud’s office received 6,000 price-gouging complaints, including reports of jacked up hotel rates and gas prices.
In the end, Consumer Affairs wound up getting settlements from gas gougers in 83 cases. The next highest state for gas gouging settlements was New York, which had 14. However, the cases took a long time to make. The latest settlement occurred 13 months after Katrina.
Walter
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