MANSFIELD, La. -- As refiners continued this week to restart some of the refineries that were shut down following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, gasoline supply remained hit and miss in some areas of the country. According to a CSP Daily News poll, about 38% of respondents were still on limited gasoline supply allocations this week, leaving stations to deal with regular outages at the pumps.
We've been running out regularly, Bill Douglass, CEO of Douglass Distributing Inc., Sherman, Texas, and board chairman of NACS, told CSP Daily News, but we'll be [[image-nocss] at the rack] the next morning, load one truck with five compartments and drop a compartment at each store. It's kind of like making a milk run.
Douglass said as of Wednesday, he was still on allocations to receive 90% to 100% of the gasoline and diesel purchases from the same day a month earlier. Even though they allow you 100%, we frequently go to terminals and they don't have the product. So we've gone 200 miles to get gas or diesel, he said.
Drivers in the small town of Mansfield, La., have found themselves facing gas stations running on empty pretty regularly since the hurricanes blew through the Gulf Coast, according to a report from KSLA-TV. All but two stations on Mansfield's main road, Highway 171, were out of gasoline Wednesday afternoon.
We're waiting on the truck to come through so we can get some more gas to help with the people, LaShonda Odom, a clerk at the Shop-A-Lott CITGO station told the TV news team. Odom said her store ran out of everything but premium gasoline Tuesday. By early afternoon, even that pumped had been drained.
[Customers have] been frustrated, and we've been trying to put up with it. But as soon as we get a truck, we can start them back to getting gas, she said.
Some stations that still had gasoline, meanwhile, did what they could to make sure they would not run out, according to the report. From Mansfield to Keithville, La., some store owners instituted rationing policies, limiting the amount of fuel a driver can buy at one time.
We had people coming in and getting $300 worth of gas, and we just wanted to make everybody happy, said Debra Nolte, a clerk at the Derrick Oil Co. in Keithville. Nolte said that policy, which put a $50 cap on gasoline purchases, is no longer in place now; however, in the days immediately following Hurricane Rita, she said, the limits were absolutely necessary because suppliers were slow to arrive with refills.
On Tuesday, Houston-based CITGO officials reported that power supply to its Lake Charles Manufacturing Complex was being re-established progressively this week, and the restart of the first boiler unita key step of the startup sequencewas expected on Wednesday. Hurricane Rita forced a complete shut down of the refinery on September 23. After almost two weeks of very hard work by our employees and contractors in difficult conditions, this is very welcome news, said F alix Rodr a guez, president and CEO of CITGO Petroleum Corp., in a statement.
Meanwhile, Valero Energy Corp., San Antonio, announced both its Houston and Texas City refineries were running at full capacity as of early this week.
Assessments continue and repair work has begun at the Motiva Port Arthur Refinery. Partial power was restored at the plant late Tuesday. "We continue to work as quickly as possible to be able to restart operations, which we expect to occur within the month," the company said in a press release. The plant will be brought up gradually and safely toward full production over several days once startup begins. Also, the Shell Deer Park refinery and chemical plant continues to increase production of gasoline, jet fuel, diesel and chemical products as part of restart activities.
Finally, San Ramon, Calif.-based Chevron Corp. announced that it has successfully and safely initiated the startup procedures for its refinery at Pascagoula, Miss. The refinery could return to normal operations by the end of the month, ahead of previous estimates.
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