Fuel Providers Step Up During Hurricane Matthew
By Samantha Oller on Oct. 14, 2016MIAMI -- Despite sporadic gasoline outages and long lines, the Southeast was able to keep fueled as Hurricane Matthew made its way along the East Coast.
The hurricane, which weakened from a Category 3 to a Category 1 storm as it rolled up the coast, inflicted limited damage on the Southeast’s gasoline and oil terminals, Reuters reported. “Florida escaped pretty easily,” Ned Bowman, chief executive of the Florida Petroleum Marketers Association, told the news service. “It could have been a lot, lot worse.”
AAA reported that gasoline retail averages jumped week over week in Florida by 6 cents per gallon (CPG) and in North Carolina by 4 CPG. Gas stations also saw some supply issues during the hurricane, as ports and terminals closed during the storm. However, with Hurricane Matthew passed, gasoline supplies in the region “remain plentiful.”
Before, during and after the storm, as flooding continues, fuel retailers and suppliers have shown grit, based on local reports. Following are a few examples from the states hit by the storm ...
Atlas Oil keeps Southeast supplied
Atlas Oil Co., a national fuel supplier based in Taylor, Mich., had its Emergency Fuel Services team prepared for the arrival of Hurricane Matthew. The company is a subcontractor for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and supplies fuel to hospitals, data centers and telecommunications companies for their generators. It sent out more than a dozen trucks and drivers to the Southeast to keep the government, first responders and other important operators supplied.
“Many of our customers are mission-critical facilities,” said Jayme Oyen, national sales manager of the emergency services team at Atlas Oil, in a statement. “It’s essential their generators have fuel so their operations don’t experience downtime.”
Atlas Oil had a second fleet of trucks at the ready for FEMA. During Hurricane Sandy, Atlas Oil partnered with FEMA emergency fuel contractor Foster Fuels to provide more than 75 trucks and drivers to supply fuel and support first responders.
“The team continues to rise to the challenge in these deployment scenarios,” said Atlas Oil President and COO Bob Kenyon. “We have a team of dedicated drivers willing to deploy on a moment’s notice backed by our logistics and supply teams working around-the-clock.”
Wawa stays steady in Florida
Florida was the first state to feel the brunt of Hurricane Matthew. In Winter Haven, a town of around 34,000 that lies between Orlando and Tampa, the local Wawa, which has headquarters in Wawa, Pa., made a strong positive impression on one local.
In a letter to local news site News Chief, Winter Haven resident Sue Jones shared the tense atmosphere before the storm, when “tempers flared and people were not always acting civil to each other.”
Many gas stations in the area had sold out of gasoline, while others that still had fuel appeared to have raised their prices by around 10 cents per gallon, said Jones.
Then she and her husband drove by the Winter Haven Wawa and saw that despite a line of customers, the c-store was still offering gas for $1.99 a gallon, “the same price that it has been all week prior to the storm rush,” she wrote.
“We pulled in and saw that the lines were orderly and that two employees were keeping things under control—directing the next cars in line to the next vacant pump,” wrote Jones. “No one seemed stressed, and the traffic flowed efficiently.
“Thank you, Winter Haven Wawa, for helping to keep order in the face of this storm,” she said. “Thank you for not gouging your customers, when you must be aware that your competitors seem to think that that is the way to do business.”
Parker’s holds tight in Georgia, South Carolina
The Parkers Cos., Savannah, Ga., has 47 Parker’s sites in coastal Georgia and South Carolina’s Lowcountry, right in the path of Hurricane Matthew. In a recent letter to the editor of the Savannah Morning News, President and CEO Greg Parker highlighted the chain’s intensive preparation efforts.
Parker’s directed district managers and store managers from Georgia to help out at its sites in South Carolina to keep stores open. Its foodservice staff worked overnight to prepare enough food to last through the storm, while retail marketing personnel focused on keeping high-demand necessities such as bottled water in stock.
“Our customers told us we carried water long after Wal-Mart and the grocery stores ran out,” Parker wrote.
On the day when Gov. Nikki Haley ordered an evacuation of South Carolina’s coastal areas, Parker’s sold 25,000 gallons of gasoline.
“That is three tractor-trailer loads of gas in one 24-hour period,” Parker noted. “Managing such a heavy demand for gas is particularly challenging from a logistics perspective, given the fact that we have 47 stores across the region.”
The chain’s maintenance team kept busy boarding up stores, securing gas pumps and putting away any objects that could become a projectile in the high winds.
“During times of disaster, it is important that we keep our doors open and keep our prices down, supplying the needs of our customers,” Parker wrote. “We are usually the last to close and the first to open when there is a hurricane. If our stores are not open, how will our customers get the gas and supplies they need as they evacuate or when they return home?”