Gas prices should begin to fall soon

Staff

Published Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Have no fear; Greenville didn’t turn into the gasoline-deficient world depicted in the apocalyptic 1981 thriller Road Warrior over the weekend.

Mad Max isn’t roaming the streets of Greenville, searching for fuel. A hockey-masked brute named Lord Humongous and his gang of mutant bikers haven’t laid siege to the city.

Fears of a gasoline shortage this weekend due to Hurricane Ike’s strike against the nation’s refining capacity in Texas were unfounded, according to Clay Ingram, spokesperson for AAA-Alabama.

Sure, some convenience stores in the area - most notably the QV station on I-65 were drained of gasoline on Friday - but most had ample supply in the tanks.

The main reason tanks were empty?

Consumers, said Ingram.

“I’m firmly convinced that the problem we have now was because of the panic buying on Friday afternoon,” said Ingram.

Ingram said many of the refineries along the Texas-Louisiana coast had shut down before Hurricane Gustav made landfall on Sept. 1.

Then, just when production was scheduled to resume, Ike barreled towards the southwestern Texas coast, home to one-fifth of the nation’s refineries.

“It has definitely caused a disruption for fuel out of that area,” said Ingram. “But they have gasoline in inventory. The reason we’ve seen some stations run out of gas is because the supplies are little tight right now. Almost all of the retail stores need a gas shipment, but the distributors are having a little trouble keeping up. The pipelines are not set up to go that quickly.”

There were others with reason to worry, though.

Superintendent Mike Looney told board members during a public budget hearing on Thursday night that gasoline inventories for the school system were down to 30 percent. The system’s service trucks use gas.

Diesel tanks, however, were filled to 100 percent capacity, but there was concern that Ike would extensively cripple refineries along the southwestern Texas coast, where the hurricane made landfall on Saturday.

Looney said the system had enough diesel to re-fuel school buses for approximately eight days.

But Looney said on Tuesday the district had secured another supplier for diesel in case of a shortage.

“We also expect to have gasoline delivered this week,” said Looney.

The effects of Ike were significant enough for motorists to expect price fluctuations in the next week.

Gas started climbing in Greenville on Thursday. AAA-Alabama reported the average price of regular unleaded gasoline at noon Tuesday as $4.09 per gallon.

The cheapest gas was available at the Greenville Citgo on Luverne Highway at $3.89 and the most expensive was at the Liberty Food Mart on the Greenville Bypass at $4.39.

Ingram said consumers should expect a price correction within the next one or two weeks.

“Once we get the refineries on track and operational we should see the price come down,” he said. “Crude oil has declined and continues to fall which is a good sign for future gas prices. Prices are just up right now because of the disruption in the process.”

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