Thread: Out of Gas

In the Southeast, we are still out of gas in many areas. A report today showed people in line for up to 2 hours sometimes trying to get gas. One man in Atlanta said that he was taking cans of gas to people in Cumming,GA, where gas is not readily available. Postal workers in the Atlanta area are waiting in line to fill their vehicles to deliver mail and many are unable to find gas to get to work.

In Tennessee, the situation is much the same. Someone mentioned that a BP station does not have gas at this time. You have to travel to get gas, and then it is best to fill up because you may not be finding any more soon.

They say that the problem is getting better, yet many stations are out of gas by noon.

Ephesians 4:32

This situation is very bad and even if a station does have gas, by the time you know that they do the lines are so long you don't want to get in line.

I was told by a friend that was returning from Panama City beach down in Florida that they have gas and it is at $3.50 a gallon. I don't understand how they have gas in FL. and we don't in GA.

That's horrible. I have cut back and limited my driving so much, I haven't been out to see how things are here. I know daily my husband complains.......but he complains all the time, so I take it with a grain of salt. LOL

Memories, I grew up in Cumming, Ga!

I am in NW Ga and finding gas has become difficult. We were able to get gas late saturday only because we picked up our son from a late night event and saw a tanker at a station, pulled in and waited for 45 minutes to fill up. Within minutes there was long line and police had to come and run interference for the station.

Very few stations close to us have fuel.

I was told by a friend that was returning from Panama City beach down in Florida that they have gas and it is at $3.50 a gallon. I don't understand how they have gas in FL. and we don't in GA.

That is wierd. Plus gas hasn't been at 3.50 here in I don't know how long. We never got that low even when we were to reap the benefits of the cheap gas.

In the Charlotte, NC area 80% of gas stations were without gas yesterday and were shut down. Those that have gas have long lines (at least a 45 minite wait) and you can only buy $20 once you get there. We have had a serious gas shortage for about a week now.

The entire SE is having serious gas availability problems.

zeezil, I think many stations are limiting the number of gallons that any one person can receive. And then of course, depending on whether you use regular, plus,etc., you take what is available.

Ephesians 4:32

No quick end to gas shortage in Southeast
By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY

ATLANTA — A storm-related gas shortage in the Southeast that has left some places bone-dry and others with two-hour gas lines is expected to continue for at least another two weeks, energy experts and industry officials say.

The shortage began two weeks after Hurricane Gustav hit the oil-refining regions of the Gulf Coast on Sept. 1. Operations that shut down before that storm were just coming back online when Hurricane Ike hit, forcing another shutdown. The gas shortage, now in its third week, is particularly acute here in sprawling Atlanta, in Nashville in parts of the Carolinas and in Anniston, Ala.

"I don't go anywhere once I find some and get my tank filled up," says Alicia Woods, 32, who waited 45 minutes to fill up Sunday morning at a QuikTrip in Cobb County, Ga. "Going out, visiting friends, all that just has to wait. I have to keep my gas for getting back and forth to work."

Long gas lines continued to plague the Charlotte area over the weekend. Asheville, N.C., shut down some government offices Friday.

"Things were pretty severe to the point gas stations did not have gas, and the ones that did have gas had an hour to two-hour wait," said city spokeswoman Trisha Hardin.

The pipelines that supply the region are operating at less than normal capacity, due largely to storm-related power outages at Texas refineries, said Kenneth Medlock, energy fellow at the Baker Institute, a non-partisan public policy think tank at Rice University in Houston.

The Southeast, the only region of the nation that has no oil refining or major gasoline storage capacity, pumps all of its gasoline in by pipeline, he said.

"In isolation, neither of these storms would have been that big a deal, because there's enough inventory (at stations) to make up the shortfall," said Medlock. "But there was a three- to four-week period of refinery capacity not operating. That's basically a month when nothing's being produced."

Panic buying — drivers topping off every time they happen across a station that actually has gas — made the problem worse, said Marylee Booth, executive director of the Tennessee Oil Marketers Association.

"If people saw a tanker drive up to a station, they'd start lining up. The panic has died down. It's getting a little better every day."

Gary Harris, executive director of the North Carolina Petroleum and Convenience Marketers, whose members sell about 90% of the gasoline in North Carolina, says he expects two to four more weeks of shortages. "There was a lot of panic buying fueled by media coverage of the shortage," he says. "Now, it's hard to catch up."

The shortage has residents like Woods changing their habits. There was even talk of canceling Saturday's highly-anticipated football game in Athens between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama, which Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue dismissed as "ridiculous."

Public transit ridership is soaring, more employees are telecommuting or working shorter weeks and Perdue is closely monitoring the situation in case it becomes necessary to close schools or take other steps, says his press secretary Bert Brantley.
http://usatoday.com/money/industries/en ... lick-refer