PSA: fill your gas tanks tonight/tomorrow morning

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Colonial Pipeline to shut U.S. Northeast fuel lines due to Harvey

Colonial Pipeline, the biggest U.S. fuel system, said it would shut its main diesel and jet fuel line on Wednesday evening and its gasoline line on Thursday because of outages at its supply points from Tropical Storm Harvey and a lack of supply from refiners.
 
I have two 14 gallons containers just a waiting for something like this.
 
I call iffy juju. I don't remember them ever having issues due to hurricanes in the past, only in the last few years.

I bet its all excuses to jack up prices, the media helps to create the panic
No, it's legit. Close to 20% of the country's refining capacity is shut down due to Harvey. Exxon and Saudi Aramco have the largest refining plants in the country and both are shut in as of today. It's not that the refineries were damaged, but people can't get there to work - and that's not because of the hurricane per se, it's because of the massive flooding, which has made lots of roads impassable (not to mention full of stranded vehicles, which need to be cleared).

If your normal use isn't going to empty your tank in the next several days, I wouldn't bother refueling immediately, as I think with the waters receding in Houston, the refineries will reopen within a few days.
 
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No, it's legit. Close to 20% of the country's refining capacity is shut down due to Harvey. Exxon and Saudi Aramco have the largest refining plants in the country and both are shut in as of today. It's not that the refineries were damaged, but people can't get there to work.

Again, never heard of it in the past during my 49 years of life. And Harvey was by no means the 1st hurricane to come thru.

And, why is it the east coast the suffers. The heaviest population areas?
 
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A lot of it is because the Colonial Pipeline is a major distribution petroleum feed for the Eastern US. Our county management receive the notifications regularly when weather events or breakdowns occur along the pipeline.

http://www.colpipe.com/home/about-colonial/system-map

upload_2017-8-30_22-11-21.png


System Map
Colonial Pipeline begins in Houston, Texas and ends in Linden, New Jersey, traversing 11 other states along the way. Our system includes 5,500 miles of pipe, services 7 airports directly and provides fuel to multiple Department of Defense installations each day. We have 15 storage tank locations strategically positioned along the pipeline to serve our customer’s needs and connect to more than 260 terminals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline

Remember the problems this interruption below caused:


 
Again, never heard of it in the past during my 49 years of life. And Harvey was by no means the 1st hurricane to come thru.

And, why is it the east coast the suffers. The heaviest population areas?

Happened in 2008 after Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Gas prices rocketed up to over $4 a gallon and gas stations ran out of gas. Lasted a few weeks. I remember it well.
 
Happened in 2008 after Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Gas prices rocketed up to over $4 a gallon and gas stations ran out of gas. Lasted a few weeks. I remember it well.
I'm with @Mike Overlay on this.

Yes..That did happen...Prices did rise..But it was price gouging instead of actual pipeline stuff in my opinion. They see an opportunity to get more $$$ , and have an excuse(hurricane), so they do it.

DS

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk
 
Filled up today. Prices already up about .20 over a day or two ago. But I was at 1/4 tank. Should have filled up the day we filled the van. Both good now, so just going to wait it out.
 
I'm with @Mike Overlay on this.

Yes..That did happen...Prices did rise..But it was price gouging instead of actual pipeline stuff in my opinion. They see an opportunity to get more $$$ , and have an excuse(hurricane), so they do it.

DS

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk


It isn't simply price gouging when most gas stations in western NC (and lots of other places in the Southeast) actually ran out of gas. That is an actual shortage and it was caused by hurricane damage temporarily knocking out refinery capacity.

It also happened in the aftermath of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
 
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It isn't simply price gouging when most gas stations in western NC (and lots of other places in the Southeast) actually ran out of gas. That is an actual shortage and it was caused by hurricane damage temporarily knocking out refinery capacity.

It also happened in the aftermath of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
And if you are a sensible gas station owner, you will raise prices long before you run out of gas. Anticipation that you will not get restocked before the tanks run dry is sufficient to justify price increases.

Think about the gun buying panic during Obama's gun control push after Sandy Hook. The dealers who didn't raise their prices were quickly emptied out and had nothing to sell for months, even though they still had to pay their overhead. The dealers who raised their prices sold fewer items, but made enough money to keep their business running until they could get restocked.
 
Don't you love how when things happen to raise prices it's immediate, and when things happen to lower prices it takes a couple weeks?
The solution to that is better market transparency. Kinda like what happened when everyone started using Amazon to price check whatever they are considering buying elsewhere.

Having GasBuddy on your smartphone helps a lot with that. As more users use apps like GasBuddy, gas station owners have greater incentive to price competitively.
 
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Situations like this make me wish I had a tank at my house. We never had fuel shortages on the farm
You could corner the market:



Speaking of gas reserves, every time I gotta bust out my gas-preps in those damned kid-safe-govt-mandated-crap-jugs I have half a brain to spend the $50 on some real jerry cans.

I had a teacher in school who's kid (teen at the time) gave himself a whole-body burn with the old jugs and she was a part of the lawsuits to change them. I mean, you feel bad for the kid but I really had to bite my tongue anytime she brought that up. A simple "and where were you when he was playing with gas?" would not have been in my best interest.
 
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You could corner the market:



Speaking of gas reserves, every time I gotta bust out my gas-preps in those damned kid-safe-govt-mandated-crap-jugs I have half a brain to spend the $50 on some real jerry cans.

I had a teacher in school who's kid (teen at the time) gave himself a whole-body burn with the old jugs and she was a part of the lawsuits to change them. I mean, you feel bad for the kid but I really had to bite my tongue anytime she brought that up. A simple "and where were you when he was playing with gas?" would not have been in my best interest.


The new 5 gallon safety cans are what I use. No spills, drips or fuss. They are mighty proud of them though but well worth the investment to have a couple.

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200447900_200447900
 
The new 5 gallon safety cans are what I use. No spills, drips or fuss. They are mighty proud of them though but well worth the investment to have a couple.

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200447900_200447900
Ya those are the ones I was talking about. Dang I didn't know they were $90. I saw some similar on Amazon for $50, but prob not the exact same.

actually, here is one for $30: https://www.amazon.com/Eagle-UI-50-...e=UTF8&qid=1504181721&sr=8-4&keywords=gas+can

Here is yours for $65: https://www.amazon.com/Justrite-Gal...=UTF8&qid=1504181721&sr=8-11&keywords=gas+can
 
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Hey I have an idea!

Let's put our refineries in the bullseye center of hurricane alley in our country!

No?
 
I bet it goes up more than a quarter.

I'm in this camp also.

Hey I have an idea!

Let's put our refineries in the bullseye center of hurricane alley in our country!

No?

Can't help where the oil is. Doesn't make sense to transport it extremely far to refine.
 
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Hey I have an idea!

Let's put our refineries in the bullseye center of hurricane alley in our country!

No?
There are refineries in other locations, such as the east coast, that have been mothballed for years, or so the guys on the ham radio were saying this morning.
 
Price of regular was up this morning, but the Mustang "requires" premium. It was already ridiculous before all this, so who cares about $3 a gallon?
 
Extract from this mornings FEMA update:

1. All six refineries in the Corpus Christie area are off-line and 5 more in the Houston/Galveston area. This equates to 2.3M barrels per day lost refining capability, but is only 12.3% of the total U.S. refining capability.

2. Three ports remain closed: Galveston, Port Arthur, and Lake Charles, LA. Brownsville and all other Gulf Coast ports are open (by exception).

3. 22 Oil Tankers carrying over 15.3M barrels of imported crude are loitering in the Gulf, unable to unload. Even though some ports are open, there are still restrictions in place keeping the supertankers at sea.

4. All rail operations near the Gulf Coast in TX and LA remain stopped.
 
Extract from this mornings FEMA update:

1. All six refineries in the Corpus Christie area are off-line and 5 more in the Houston/Galveston area. This equates to 2.3M barrels per day lost refining capability, but is only 12.3% of the total U.S. refining capability.

2. Three ports remain closed: Galveston, Port Arthur, and Lake Charles, LA. Brownsville and all other Gulf Coast ports are open (by exception).

3. 22 Oil Tankers carrying over 15.3M barrels of imported crude are loitering in the Gulf, unable to unload. Even though some ports are open, there are still restrictions in place keeping the supertankers at sea.

4. All rail operations near the Gulf Coast in TX and LA remain stopped.

I like how they say "Only 12.3%". That is a massive amount. Based on refined gasoline usage per day (not including diesel) that's a reduction of over 48 million gallons of gas per day.

If you figure an average of 20 gallons per fill up that's 2.4 million less tanks that can get filled up in a given day.
 
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Can't help where the oil is. Doesn't make sense to transport it extremely far to refine.
I get that, but you can strengthen critical infrastructure and put procedures in place for looming disasters like this. That is, if it is deemed "critical." To me, the fuel supply of the majority of the eastern seaboard is as critical as a hospital, police, or fire station. Build a bunkhouse and put the guys on shifts while they sleep at the refinery. I know it's not feasible to pump crude a far distance just to be out of the strike zone of a "maybe" you'll get hit. But you gotta plan for this stuff and make it where only the worst of the worst disrupt normal ops. This storm was average compared to what a hurricane could do.

I'm sick and fricken tired of hearing all these disaster stories as a result of a slow moving hurricane. They move at a turtle's pace and give days' notice. There's no excuse for loss of life or poor planning ot keep critical components up and running. Growing up in Florida, it became a way of life. Board up the house, unboard the house. Go into work and sleep on cots, get some overtime pay, go home. The one time we were actually hit in 2005, we got our ass handed to us with three back-to-back-to-back storms, but we fared well and kept disruption to a minimum.

Rant over...
 
I get that, but you can strengthen critical infrastructure and put procedures in place for looming disasters like this. That is, if it is deemed "critical." To me, the fuel supply of the majority of the eastern seaboard is as critical as a hospital, police, or fire station. Build a bunkhouse and put the guys on shifts while they sleep at the refinery. I know it's not feasible to pump crude a far distance just to be out of the strike zone of a "maybe" you'll get hit. But you gotta plan for this stuff and make it where only the worst of the worst disrupt normal ops. This storm was average compared to what a hurricane could do.

I'm sick and fricken tired of hearing all these disaster stories as a result of a slow moving hurricane. They move at a turtle's pace and give days' notice. There's no excuse for loss of life or poor planning ot keep critical components up and running. Growing up in Florida, it became a way of life. Board up the house, unboard the house. Go into work and sleep on cots, get some overtime pay, go home. The one time we were actually hit in 2005, we got our ass handed to us with three back-to-back-to-back storms, but we fared well and kept disruption to a minimum.

Rant over...

We lost everything to Andrew except what we were able to load into our geo storm (lol, yeah I know it was the last "car" I ever bought for a reason). We evacuated to ormand beach and had some fantastic surfing. That was until the 18' tiger shark decided to come check us out... Then it was "SEE YA!"
 
Price of regular was up this morning, but the Mustang "requires" premium. It was already ridiculous before all this, so who cares about $3 a gallon?
Ditto. Bought ethanol free 93 for the Cobra at $2.99/gallon. With it, I'll gladly pay $2.49/gal to feed my beater.
 
And if you are a sensible gas station owner, you will raise prices long before you run out of gas. Anticipation that you will not get restocked before the tanks run dry is sufficient to justify price increases.

Think about the gun buying panic during Obama's gun control push after Sandy Hook. The dealers who didn't raise their prices were quickly emptied out and had nothing to sell for months, even though they still had to pay their overhead. The dealers who raised their prices sold fewer items, but made enough money to keep their business running until they could get restocked.
http://tomwoods.com/ep-987-price-gouging-is-urgently-necessary/
 
I'm with @Mike Overlay on this.

Yes..That did happen...Prices did rise..But it was price gouging instead of actual pipeline stuff in my opinion. They see an opportunity to get more $$$ , and have an excuse(hurricane), so they do it.

DS

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk
Gouging, panic buying and a geniune shortage all look the same from where I'm sitting.
 
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