Gasoline shortage in Southeast prompts panic
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gasoline shortages in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and parts of Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ike have driven some consumers to desperate measures as they hunt for places to fill up.
"Some people are even following tankers to the station and then they descend upon the station," said Randy Bly, a spokesman for the AAA's Auto Club South Chapter which represents southeastern states.
Bly said the Atlanta, Georgia and Nashville, Tennessee metro areas have been particularly hard hit.
Hurricane Ike shut 15 refineries in the Gulf Coast's refinery row and shut several pipelines as well. The outages have driven U.S. gasoline inventories to their lowest levels since 1967, and refinery utilization rates have sunk to their lowest rates on record.
Supply disruptions could continue in some areas of the country for weeks, the U.S. government said on Wednesday.
In Nashville, Tennessee, there were reports on local television of people cutting in line and fighting at gasoline stations as motorists rushed to stock up after a news report that Colonial Pipeline was running below normal capacity, said Doria Gibbons, a nurse who lives in the city.
Colonial Pipeline runs gasoline and diesel from Houston to the Northeast.
Asheville, North Carolina, a town of about 70,000 in the mountainous western part of the state, also has suffered severe shortages.
Idling cars lined up for a quarter mile at some stations selling gasoline near $5 per gallon, according to DeChanile Brooks, a mental health therapist from Chapel Hill who was visiting the area for a conference.
The shortages in the Southeast have sparked hoarding in some cases, with some reports of motorists filling up their tanks and several other containers as well, Bly said.
"Not only is that a very dangerous practice, it's also illegal to transport multiple containers in a private vehicle in most states," Bly said, adding that it also contributes to the problem.
"We try to encourage motorists not to panic buy...it's prolonging the outage. We are calling on motorists to exercise restraint."
Less supply from Gulf Coast refineries has taken away the region's traditional advantage in gasoline pricing. Motorists in California, meanwhile, have enjoyed a respite from paying the highest gasoline prices in the continental United States.
By Wednesday, 18 states still had higher gasoline prices than California -- which normally has the highest pump prices because of tougher environmental fuel standards and a lack of access to supplies produced east of the Rockies.
(Reporting by Rebekah Kebede and Bernie Woodall; Editing by David Gregorio)
