TAMPA, Fla. -- Gasoline suppliers appear ready to meet Florida's emergency needs after a major hurricane, but the public must still prepare for inevitable shortages, according to an Associated Press report.
By planning ahead, working together and using fuel supplies wisely, we can better prepare communities for the storm season, said state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Colleen Castille.
She met with about 40 representatives from petroleum companies, gas stations and others in the fuel distribution network to [image-nocss] review hurricane response plans, including using police escorts to move gasoline where it is needed and keeping in touch through text messaging if primary communications break down. Representatives were on hand from from BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Hess, CITGO, Maritrans, the Florida Petroleum Council and the Florida Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association.
Establishing a thoughtful process between fuel companies and the state will also help restore reserves quickly in the event a hurricane or tropical storm disrupts supply, she said, but added that there will not be all the fuel that everybody wants all of the time.
The state will divert gasoline first to hospitals, nursing homes and emergency responders. People hoping to run their refrigerator with a portable generator will need to rely on their own gasoline supply for up to 10 days after the storm.
There are going to be disruptions in supply, Florida Petroleum Council Executive Director David Mica said. There are going to be outages in certain areas when a certain company can't get their ship in. Those kinds of things are going to happen. We need to expect that and deal with it.
Castille said the state is working with distributors to streamline permits for additional storage facilities around Florida. But Mica conceded those expansions are needed as much to keep up with Florida's growing population as for disaster response.
She said many companies reported they were already working on installing generators at stations. As reported in CSP Daily News, last week, Governor Jeb Bush signed a bill that will require some station owners to buy generators. The measure would require owners of 10 or more stations to have by July 1 one generator that could be shared by the stations. Industry officials say many other station owners will be getting generators, even though they may not be required, because it is good business. But no one could say for sure many stations will have generators in place for this season.
Most of Florida's gasoline comes through the state's ports, Mica said. When ships are diverted to avoid a storm, it creates a burp in the supply chain. A normal supply of 265 million gallons on a given day could dwindle to about 100 million gallons. Florida needs a minimum of 28 million gallons of gasoline per day for emergency operations.
We have a significant amount of fuel, Castille said. They have anticipated the demand for this summer.
Separately, Chevron Corp. CEO Dave O'Reilly said the U.S. oil industry is better prepared to deal with the hurricane season this year. I think the industry is much better prepared, but that doesn't mean that we're ready if you have something like happened last year, he said at a press conference, according to Reuters.
Nearly a quarter of U.S. oil and gas production was taken offline and oil prices hit new highs last year when the most hurricanes ever in one season raged through Gulf of Mexico.
O'Reilly cited a fragile people situation including the fact that many people in areas affected by hurricanes last year were still living in temporary housing. He added that the industry had recovered as much as it could in production over the past year. Around 300,000 barrels per day of oil output remains shut in the region according to the U.S. government.
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