Suppliers: Relax, gas is coming

Shortages of gasoline across metro Atlanta should abate this week, local suppliers say.

Still, they caution against a run on pumps to top off tanks.

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Brian Feagans/bfeagans@ajc.com

Jonetta Myles snaps a photo of her $111 bill Sunday at a Chevron station off Ponce de Leon Ave. in Atlanta. Myles, an assistant principal from Conyers, documents her largest gas bills in case she later realizes she was the victim of price gouging.

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Brian Feagans/bfeagans@ajc.com

Ola Henriksson, bass player for the Swedish band Witchcraft, and David Kristersson, the tour manager, are all smiles after forking out more than $100 for gasoline Sunday at an Atlanta Chevron. They pay twice as much for gas in their native country.

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Gasoline suppliers say the back-to-back hurricanes, Ike and Gustav, temporarily stopped the flow of gas from refineries along the Gulf Coast, creating sporadic outages at stations in metro Atlanta and elsewhere and hiking prices above the $4 mark.

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“Everyone was recovering from Gustav,” said Scott Dean, a spokesman for BP, which owns and operates stations in the metro area. “And then Ike came along.”

Ike came ashore at Galveston Friday and forced gas suppliers to shutter refineries along the Texas coast, said Dean, whose employer operates a Texas refinery capable of treating 400,000 barrels of crude oil in a day. That interrupted pipeline supplies to fuel depots across the Southeast, he said. And that has caused sporadic outages at pumps.

The same dilemma faced Louisiana refinery operators when Gustav came ashore Sept. 1 west of New Orleans, Dean said. Refineries closed, depots waited for supplies and deliveries to stations were periodically delayed.

While supplies were low, prices were high. The average price of a gallon of regular Monday was $4.12, according to AtlantaGasPrices.com, which compiles motorists’ reports. That was up 1 cent from Sunday, when the average equaled the mid-July peak of $4.11.

Prices varied across the metro area. The highest reported price mid-Monday was $4.69 at a station in Jonesboro, while BJs in Cumming had the cheapest at $3.55 a gallon.

“We’re not out of gas,” said Tex Pitfield, president and chief executive officer of Saraguay Petroleum Corp. The Atlanta-based distributor operates 20 tankers that deliver gas across the metro area and beyond. He blamed spotty outages on the “insane run” on stations during the weekend, when motorists feared Ike would shut off supplies.

State officials have asked residents to report gas price gouging to the Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs. Between Friday and Monday afternoon, the state received 140 complaints of unfair pricing, a consumer affairs official said.

Signs taped to pumps Monday at a BP near the intersection of Haynes Bridge and Old Alabama roads in North Fulton offered similar assurances. Gasoline trucks, said the signs, were late — but they would come.

Gas never was cut off in the metro area, said QuikTrip spokesman Mike Thornburgh, but the flow was slow. By Saturday, only a quarter of the region’s 111 QuikTrips had fuel remaining, he said.

That prompted QuikTrip to use a plan it developed in 2005, when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita delivered a one-two punch to distributors. The retailer let some stations run dry while keeping supplies flowing to a predetermined group of stations spread evenly across metro Atlanta, Thornbrugh said.

“We were bound and determined that in [some] stations,” he said, “we’re going to have gas in all parts of the city.”

Some stations, such as the QT at North Druid Hills and Briarcliff roads, went dry pretty quickly; by Sunday, its pumps were quiet. A nearby Shell station was just as empty. And yellow bags placed on nozzles at a Citgo just around the corner, on Clairmont Road, sent the same message: WE’RE OUT.

That funneled many drivers to a Chevron on North Druid Hills, near I-85. It had only 87-octane remaining, for $4.25 per gallon.

Zoe Cernut feared she might run out of gas before gliding into the station, seemingly on fumes. “I called my friend and said ‘You might have to come pick me up.’ “

But the increase in demand rests more with folks such as Boyd McKeown, of Decatur. When he stopped to get gas Sunday, his silver Honda had a half-tank.

He relayed a story from Texas, where a relative whose husband works for a gas pipeline company gave him the inside word: fill ‘er up.

“She said, ‘You better go get gas,’ ” said McKeown, evoking a decades-old memory of gas rationing. “It’s like World War II.”

Gasoline retailers urged a different view.

“We believe the situation is temporary,” read a statement from Pilot Travel Centers, which operates 25 outlets in Georgia. “While we are still waiting to hear about all of the impacts to refineries and pipelines from Ike, we expect the daily (or spot) market for fuel to start coming down this week.”

So does Jim Tudor, president of the Georgia Association of Convenience Stores. Gas is here, he said, and more is on the way. “It will take us a few days to catch up,” he said.

Meantime, he said, if the tank isn’t empty, leave the gas for someone whose car is.

Staff writer Michelle Shaw and The Associated Press contributed to this report.