RALEIGH, N.C. -- This is how serious the Southeastern gasoline shortage has become: There's talk of calling off college football, said the Associated Press. A petroleum executive's suggestion that No. 3 Georgia postpone Saturday's game against No. 8 Alabama [SEE UPDATE BELOW]was quickly dismissed Friday by the Georgia governor's office as "ridiculous." But the University of Georgia's police chief did suggest that fans who cannot make a round trip to Sanford Stadium in Athens on a single tank stay home. Weeks after Hurricane Ike shut down Gulf Coast refineries and dried up interstate pipelines, [image-nocss] some drivers are waiting in long lines to top off their tanks at the few stations with fuel.
Many across the Southeast are keeping their cars in the garage, forced to cancel plans for fear they will run out of gasoline.
The gasoline shortage has hit hardest in Atlanta, Nashville, Tenn., and the Carolinas, including the Charlotte area and the mountain towns to the west. For days it has closed civic offices, cut short workdays and canceled community-college classes. Despite the arrival of more fuel, the shortage appears likely to continue to intrude on personal time, threatening college-football homecomings, spins through the mountains to check out fall foliage and a last warm-weather weekend at the beach.
Panic buying is part of the problem, the report said. Tom Crosby, a spokesman for AAA Carolinas, told AP that more than two-thirds of the Gulf Coast oil refineries shut down by Ike are back online. Fuel is again flowing in the pipelines that serve the hardest-hit areas, he said, but not enough to account for folks rushing to top off their tanks when an empty station is resupplied. "It's like ants to a picnic, and they feed until it's all gone," Crosby said.
He and state officials said over the weekend that supply problems in western North Carolina should subside by Saturday.
Thursday night, dozens of drivers camped out in their cars at a CITGO station in Charlotte, said WSOC-TV.
At a Shell station Saturday morning in Atlanta's Midtown district, about 25 drivers waited for a chance to pump what has become a rare commodity, said a Bloomberg report. The line clogged a side street, causing backups. "We got about 12 or 13 cars outside right now," Randy Akins, the station's assistant manager, told the news agency. "It's crazy. It's been like this since 6 a.m. We'll probably be out by lunchtime at this rate. I don't know when we're going to get more."
Tulsa, Okla.-based QuikTrip Corp., which has more than 111 stations in the Atlanta area, said it shut down fuel pumps at about half its stores and is struggling to keep fuel flowing at those it is keeping on.
The overhead sign at a QuikTrip in Norcross, Ga., had blank squares where the price usually hangs, said Bloomberg. Another QuikTrip, about two miles away, was jammed with cars trying to squeeze into lines at pumps that were each at least two deep with drivers waiting to fill up. There was no premium or midgrade gasoline, only regular unleaded. Tractor trailers were three deep waiting for diesel on the back side of the station.
QuikTrip went through this three years ago when hurricanes Katrina and Rita smacked the Gulf Coast within four weeks of each other and the chain's Atlanta-area stores ran out of gasoline, company spokesperson Mike Thornbrugh told the news agency. This time, he said, the chain stopped fuel sales at half of its area convenience stores so it could try to keep the other half supplied with gasoline and diesel. At times, fuel has been so scarce that only about one-fourth of the stores have gasoline, he said.
As for when more fuel will be available, Thornbrugh said, "don't ask me for a projection because I don't know. We're scrambling just to try to find fuel."
"Atlanta's getting hammered pretty good with outages," Randy Bly, a regional spokesperson for AAA, told the news agency. "It looks like the most stressed in the entire Southeast."
Fuel supplies in Nashville were up to about 70% of capacity Saturday from 30% earlier this week, Bly said. Four out of five stations in Charlotte are empty, according to AAA. Cities further north and closer to the coast supplemented their fuel supplies with shipments by barge, AAA said.
Four refineries remain shut down after Gustav struck the Louisiana coast on September 1 and Ike made landfall in southeast Texas on September 13. Five plants are restarting, and nine are running at reduced rates. At least 46 million barrels of motor-fuel output was lost between August 30 and September 19, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Pipelines capable of carrying about 4.9 million barrels a day of gasoline and distillate fuels were shut down or running below capacity.
Ray Perryman, a Waco, Texas, energy economist, told UPI, "The whole situation does point up the need for additional refining capacity in the country."
Local laws resulting in more than 200 boutique gasoline blends have also slowed production, industry observers said.
On Wednesday, the federal Environment Protection Authority (EPA) put a moratorium on one low-sulfur blend, called the "Atlanta blend," required by local environmental laws.
"These boutique fuel requirements that are legislated in so many states are counterproductive at times like this," Greg Laskoski, a spokesperson for AAA Auto Club South in Atlanta, told The Christian Science Monitor.
Meanwhile, the state of Georgia has subpoenaed sales records from 130 stations after complaints of price gouging in the wake of Hurricane Ike this month, said AP. Bill Cloud with the Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs said that number will only grow as state officials work their way through hundreds of reports from angry customers. He said the state has a receipt from a station in Cobb County that charged $8.82 for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline. He said another customer called to say a station in Houston County charged $7 a gallon.[UPDATE: Backed by a dominant defense and John Parker Wilson's accurate passing, No. 8 Alabama raced to a stunning 31-point lead by halftime against self-destructing Georgia and held on to beat the third-ranked Bulldogs 41-30 Saturday night, establishing Nick Saban's team as a national championship contender in his second season. Georgia (4-1, 1-1 Southeastern Conference) became the third team in the top four to fall on a devastating week for ranked teams, joining No. 1 USC and No. 4 Florida in the loss column. (AP)]Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.