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OK I am was wondering how many of my fellow Dakkites are getting hit by the Gas Outages in the Southeast.

It is starting to get really tough down here. People have actually stop complain about the high cost ($4.14 a gal) and just need it. As soon as stations get gas in 2 or more hours they run out. People are running out of gas before they can find they can find a station that has any. Cases of fighting and guns being drawn at gas stations are getting more common.

I live close to work and I have a economy car so i am lucky and a full tank can run me about 7 days or more.

If they han't blacked out the UGA game or just rescheduled it things might not be so bad, but all of the UGA fans had to go to the game and they sucked the town dry doing it.

Wow. Im kinda surprised that I havent heard this anywhere else so far. Not even on the news. Guns being drawn? Thats some pretty serious stuff. I havent had any problems so far.

It is really an regional issue here in the US. The gas stations have been calling the police to keep order and directing traffic.

There were some refinery shutdowns due to hurricanes and subsequent power outages... Every state has legislated different formulas for gas... These sorts of things have led to some recent localized shortages.

Here in Middle TN, we're pretty much back to normal, but there was a pretty rough patch where there was pretty much no gas to be had at ANY price. Hadn't heard about any violence, although I was close to violence against the jerks who tried to bully their way in for gas.

No shortages here (Chicago suburbs), but prices did spike to almost $5 a gallon for a couple days. Though I suspect that was the result of the local stations, known to engage in price fixing, taking advantage of news from other parts of the country.

Here in Georgia finding gas is still an endeavor (especialy near Atlanta) very little to be had and long waits for whats available (I have seen a few fights,but as of yet no gun play).
There is no constant police presence at gas stations however,they are only being called in if needed.
Things were much worse after Huricane Katrina ( i lived on the mississippi gulf coast then) were the wait for any available gas was an all day situation rather then an hour or two (or three lol).
Suposedly things will be back to normal in a few weeks,then we can all go back to complaining about the price of gas instead of its unavailability.

One thing i do know for certain is that the oil companies will not let a refinery be down for a minute more than it absolutely has to be. Guys work round the clock and get called in from all parts to make sure things get back up and running. It's kind of amazing to watch actually.

I'm currently in Houston, and have noticed no shortages at all. Imagine that, in Energy, USA. However back home in NorthWest South Carolina, my wife says that the gas shortages got fierce, still very hard to get gas. Fights, police, most stations out of fuel. Suppossed ot be mucho re-fuel truckin that way.

But you all are right, this was kept quiet. I dunno how newsworthy it would have been, but I am guessing that it would have been mentioned at least </scornful understatement>

I'm currently in northwestern SC, and while the gas shortage has been uncomfortably tight it's not the end of the world. You can find gas, but you need to actually plan a trip to go looking for it, not casually hope you'll find a station that has some. I've seen some real stupidity at the pumps, and tempers have been... short. It seams to be regional yes, as drive a few hours north and you can find gas much easier. Last I heard Atlanta was nearly dry and will stay that way for a while yet. One major problem was that the severity of the shortage had not yet sunk home for a lot of people before the local college had its football game, so prices shot up and pumps ran dry. If you wait until the rush hour when everyone is getting off work to find gas, your poor planning has left you screwed. People have been trailing the fuel tankers to the stations. Talking to the transfer truck drivers (local 18 wheeler delivery guys), it seams part of the problem is a shortage of tankers. It was easy to keep fuel in the tanks when all the gas stations had fuel and there was no run on it. Simply put, there's not enough trucks to fill up enough gas stations simultaneously. With all the gas stations empty the trucks can't fill them up faster than the paniced drivers are emptying them.

People are doing a lot more "only driving where they need to", but my job shows me a perspective that most people haven't gotten yet; Truckers are having a hard time getting fuel too! Thankfully trucks usually have 1,000+ mile range so they can come in from parts of the country where they can get gas and still make the trip back, otherwise we'd see a curtailing of things like shipments to grocery stores, etc.

In Knoxville, we'll occasionally have a frequented station that runs out of gas, but it usually just means a short trip down the road to another station that may be cheaper anyhow.

Of course, I don't drive a great deal anymore, and I'm fortunate enough to be about a mile from one of the consistently cheapest stations in the area.

Well, We finally have a steady flow of gas. The prices are still pretty high right now. $3.98 a gal

Here in the St. Louis, MO area we're at about $3.49 a gallon. No real bargain, for sure... but I haven't heard of a station running out, yet.


Eric

It's a common theme in the UK in recent years - shortages however are mainly caused by external events that restrict supplies. People queue for gas (yes, I call it gas when conversing with Americans), or start panic buying ahead of time - itself causing self-fulfilling shortages!

I vacationed (see what I did there? ) in Virginia this year. I have to confess to renting a mid-size SUV, filling it up for $70 and being immensely pleased. We pay twice that and barely complain. Just goes to show how idiotic we are over here.

I guess if people depend on their cars, it's going to get nasty.

Yeah, things seem to have returned to normalcy, with the gas stations I have stopped into only having a shortage of Premium. Rather, a complete lack of it. Prices are actually better than when I left 2 weeks ago.

Whoops. Just got a little out in the sticks today, more toward Spartanburg. Found a BP station that's had NO gas for 2 weeks. Seems to be quite the norm, from wha tthe locals are saying.

In Ohio, a few weeks ago with all the hurricanes, there was a lot of wind damage and like 400,000+ people lost power (it might have even been higher, I can't remember). The problem with gas was that all of the gas stations I knew of had gas, but they had all lost power, so they couldn't pump it!

If you have it and can't access it, you might as well not have it...

Yes, we're talking about a law or incentive program in Texas (GCregion now) to get stations to have generators so they can still function without power.

I'm annoyed however that several areas are waiting on FEMA funds for cleanup. Texans should take care of Texans.

Quick-Update

I filled my tank @ $2.06/GAL.

Gas has dropped almost $1.92 in just over 30 days.

What caused the gas price per barrel to drop so bad? Was it all strictly speculation?

I just want to say that I was right. I never said it here, only recently started venturing into the off-topic forum, but I told my friends and family ect that I expected the gas prices to keep going down until the election, then they'd go back up. Well, by election day gas here was all the way down (ha!) to $1.73 a gallon. Tuesday it jumped up to $1.89. Yeah, I know, it's still a lot less than it was during the good summer months, but I find it amusingly coincidental.

Alot of the cause for the crash in the prices is that essentially everyone was caught short by the economic cricis.

Speculators upped the price in the hope that the economies would continue to power on.

Now US is looking at a deep recession, Europe is in the same boat, as well as Japan, China has slashed growth forcasts to about 9% as of a few weeks ago instead of the usual double digit and other emerging markets have been hit hard.

Recession = contraction in manufacturing, fewer jobs, less need for oil based products including petrol = the dramatic slide back to where petrol shouyld have been before the speculators jumped on the bandwagon.

Ohh, god.... $1.73 a gallon?

that's about £1.10-ish over here. A few weeks back that was the price per litre (approx 0.2 gal)

you guys don't know how good you've got it.

yes... it would be nice if the democrats would let us build more oil refinerys (so that when only a few have to be shut down, gas doent become liquid gold) and drill more (come on, cuba and china can drill 60 miles of the cost of flordia, but we CANT wtf )

then again, with more of that. jobs would be created... and man, they dont want to blame THAT on bush. no way no how.

It doesn't matter if we start drilling offshore since we've been sliding down Hubbert's Peak for a while now and gas prices will only ever go up, barring a collapsing economy like now.

Hubbert's Peak? What is?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory

Gas has gotten down to $2.25 a gallon around me, from a peak just over $4. With the economic slowdown, demand decreased. And now, naturally, OPEC is cutting production. No doubt prices will come back up next Spring.

The oil companies have had plenty of space to drill off shore. They have come up with no good reason as to why prices were up so high and why they were making soo much profit. So people cut back on going places, and buying cars. More oil won't bring prices down, compiition will.

sexiest_hero wrote:The oil companies have had plenty of space to drill off shore. They have come up with no good reason as to why prices were up so high and why they were making soo much profit. So people cut back on going places, and buying cars. More oil won't bring prices down, compiition will.

Sigh...