Although concerns over Hurricane Ike caused gas prices in The T&D Region to rise over a dollar overnight, a spot survey of Orangeburg area gas stations on Saturday showed the price for regular unleaded holding steady between $4.39 and $4.59 a gallon.
Some local outlets were able to hold the line just short of the $4 mark. The Hot Spot at 948 John C. Calhoun, whose storage tanks went dry Friday, has replenished its stocks and is selling gas for $3.99 a gallon.
Brabham Oil Company spokesman Brad McCully says the 27 area Horizon convenience stores that the Bamberg company owns is selling unleaded for $4.59 because Brabham must now go to Charleston and pay $4.57 per gallon.
“We’re not trying to stick it to anybody,” said McCully. “If anybody can find gas anywhere less costly than that, they should buy it. Murphy can refine its own petroleum and can charge what it wants. Murphy is also a wholesaler and they’re selling at over $5 a gallon. Everybody is not paying the same and just getting it is the question now.”
Across the country, Hurricane Ike continued to create a wave of price spikes.
Fears that the massive storm would cut off supply lent to wide disparities in prices from state by state, and even block by block.
Ike, coming two weeks after Hurricane Gustav, struck the Texas coast, a region thick with oil refineries that produce millions of gallons of gasoline for the country.
The storm shut down 14 Texas refineries with a total capacity of 3.8 million barrels of crude a day.
Gas prices soared as high as $4.99 in Knoxville, Tenn. “One of our local gasoline chains called a local TV station Thursday, sometime during the day and said, ‘We’re running out of gas. We’re going up 80 cents a gallon,” said Sharon Cawood, an account executive.
“By the time it hit 6 o’clock news and 11 o’clock news it was like snow was falling and milk and bread were flying off the shelves. There were lines at the gas station.”
The average cost for a gallon of gas nationwide could head back toward all-time highs of $4 per gallon.
In suburban Cleveland, gas jumped from $3.55 early in the week to $3.79. Gas at Chicago area stations was closing in on $4.50.
Geoff Sundstrom, AAA’s fuel price analyst in Orlando, Fla., said Ike has disrupted supply at the wholesale level in the Gulf Coast, where prices struck $4.85 a gallon Friday.
A number of states took action to prevent price gouging. There were 186 gouging complaints in Florida by Saturday, according to the Attorney General’s Office. There were reports of gas as high as $5.50 a gallon in Tallahassee, said spokeswoman Sandi Copes.
Refineries may remain shut-in for days, even if there was no serious wind damage or flooding, as workers must go though extensive procedures to restart the massive complexes.
Ike ravaged southeast Texas early Saturday, battering the coast with driving rain and high wind. Thousands of homes and government buildings are flooded, roads are washed out, and power outages were at 2.6 million customers from Houston into Louisiana.
Ike was about twice the size of Hurricane Gustav, which rammed into the Louisiana shore two weeks ago. The last refinery shut down by Gustav restarted Thursday.
The storm surge was less severe than what had been predicted. Wilson Shaffer, chief of the National Weather Service’s evaluation division, said Saturday morning that the highest surge so far was seen at Sabine Pass in Texas, at about 13.5 feet, according to tidal gauges.
Forecasters had predicted a surge of up to 25 feet, which would have been the highest in recorded history in Texas, above 1961’s Hurricane Carla, a storm that brought a 22-foot wall of water, with some 15 feet rushing inland up shipping channels.
The Sabine Pipe Line, a crucial natural gas conduit, has been shut down, according to the CME Group, parent of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The CME made a finding of force Majeure for all remaining delivery obligations for September natural gas contracts.
Refineries along the upper Texas Gulf Coast account for about one-fifth of the nation’s refining capacity. Exxon Mobil’s refinery in Baytown, outside Houston, is the nation’s largest. Valero’s refineries at Houston, Texas City and Port Arthur remain shut down, and all three have lost power.