Georgia’s gas shortage exposed fragile system

On Aug. 28, Gov. Sonny Perdue officially designated September as “Preparedness Month.” The state, Perdue said, had developed an “ambitious and proactive” campaign with a name that bespoke vigilance: Ready Georgia.

Two weeks later, however, Georgians learned just how unprepared the state was for a rapidly emerging crisis in auto-centric metro Atlanta: a gasoline shortage.

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Elissa Eubanks/eeubanks@ajc.com

People filling up their gas tanks at a Quick Trip near the Mall of Georgia in the predawn hours last week.

GAS SHORTAGE
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Even as Perdue signed the preparedness proclamation, the area’s gasoline supply chain was threatened. Hurricanes Gustav and Ike shut down 15 oil refineries in Louisiana and Texas, and metro Atlanta’s worst gasoline shortage in memory was under way.

“No one was surprised,” said Jim Tudor, president of the Georgia Association of Convenience Stores, who consulted with state officials on their response. “But it’s very difficult to plan. The reality is, state government can’t make gas.”

The shortage finally eased late last week. But questions remain about whether state officials could have done more to prevent a disruption in fuel supplies or should have reacted more aggressively as shortages spread. It also remains unclear whether Georgia will be any better equipped to deal with similar situations in the future.

Several factors converged to exacerbate metro Atlanta’s shortage, state officials and oil industry executives said last week.

The region gets almost all its fuel via pipeline from the Gulf Coast, and each of the recent hurricanes damaged or cut power to most of the refineries that supply the pipelines. Then, just after Ike made landfall, crude oil futures spiked, setting off a run on gasoline stations. Intensive media coverage — with live shots of long lines at service stations — might have kept the crisis alive.

Perdue and other officials took care not to incite panic, said Chris Clark, executive director of the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority, which manages the state’s energy emergency plan.

“Our approach was measured,” Clark said Friday. “It was prudent.”

The gasoline shortage, he said, was not severe enough statewide to warrant drastic intervention, such as closing schools or rationing fuel.

“That’s something that’s reserved for the worst-case scenario for the whole state,” Clark said. “We needed to have tools available if things got worse.”

Perdue’s aides said the governor stayed on top of the gasoline situation, taking part in daily briefings, even while traveling to Spain on a trade mission.

“Anybody who knows this governor and has worked with him knows he’s an engaged type of guy,” said Bert Brantley, a spokesman for Perdue. “He is very hands-on and wants to make informed — he calls it ‘data-driven’ — decisions.”

Critics — mostly Democrats, but some Republicans — complained of a lack of leadership.

“It is typical of them never giving a decision,” state House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) said of the Perdue administration. “What this is, is a pattern of behavior of waiting until too late.”

Cobb County Commission Chairman Sam Olens, a Republican who may run to succeed Perdue as governor in 2010, called the state’s response “wholly inadequate.” And fuel distributor Tex Pitfield, chief executive of Saraguay Petroleum in Atlanta, said he suggested directly to Perdue that the state ration gasoline supplies. His suggestion, Pitfield wrote in an op-ed article late last month, “fell on deaf ears.”

State officials attacked the shortage mainly around the margins, critics said, with the governor at one point declaring that Atlanta had “ample fuel” and that no crisis existed. Perdue also asked Georgians to drive slower, avoid idling in their cars, and properly inflate their tires to conserve fuel.

The governor appealed to federal regulators to suspend rules requiring cleaner fuel for metro Atlanta. By then, the problem wasn’t that the metro area couldn’t get enough of its special blend; it couldn’t get enough gasoline of any kind.

Members of the governor’s staff, other state officials and representatives of the oil companies, pipeline firms and gasoline distributors have conducted regular conference calls since the hurricanes struck to discuss fuel supplies.

“We relied on the industry experts and their associations to give us the best data they had to make the best decisions we could,” said Clark, head of the environmental facilities authority.

At first, said Tudor, the convenience stores’ representative on the calls, “we did not know — nor did anyone know — how much the infrastructure would be damaged.”

At the group’s urging, the state eased rules for fuel trucks and drivers, hoping to speed delivery of any gasoline that became available. But the group did not ask Perdue to fully activate the energy emergency plan, which could have set minimum and maximum purchases at gas stations and restricted the days on which motorists could buy fuel.

Some states took more aggressive actions. South Carolina restricted non-essential travel by government employees, while North Carolina officials made arrangements to truck in fuel from areas with greater supplies.

But Georgia officials say they could not have done more to ameliorate shortages. Nor, they say, can they guarantee future supply disruptions won’t occur.

Stockpiling gasoline for emergencies would be expensive; tank farms would have to be constructed and stocked. Further, gas begins degrading after a year or so, meaning that large reserves could become useless.

“We don’t have the infrastructure to be able to do that,” said Shane Hix, a spokesman for the environmental facilities agency. “The state of Georgia doesn’t own any [reserve] fuel storage.”

Getting fuel from somewhere other than the Gulf Coast also presents problems.

The pipelines that serve metro Atlanta originate in the Houston area and in southwestern Louisiana. Neither hurricane harmed the lines. But because the storms damaged some refineries and knocked out power to others, little fuel could be pumped through the underground network.

Coastal areas of the Southeast, such as Savannah, do not rely on pipelines, but rather on massive tanker ships, to deliver gasoline and other petroleum products. Metro Atlanta, like other inland regions, can’t do that. Hix said the state will look into transporting fuel from Atlantic Coast ports to the Atlanta area in the future.

The reliance on Gulf Coast gasoline became more critical this year than it was the last time two hurricanes struck the region. In 2005, enough time lapsed between Katrina and Rita for some refineries damaged in the first storm to get back on line before the second hit, said Steve Baker, a spokesman for Alpharetta-based Colonial Pipeline, one of two companies that pipe fuel to the South and the Eastern Seaboard.

Gustav made landfall on Sept. 1. Ike hit on Sept. 13. But the run on gasoline stations didn’t begin until the following week, after crude oil prices rose dramatically — from $91 a barrel to $104 — in three days, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Tudor, who represents the convenience stores, said panic buying, fed by continuous news coverage, created the shortage.

“We’ll have a shortage as long as people believe we have a shortage,” Tudor said. “As soon as people believe there is going to be gas tomorrow, they won’t feel the necessity of trying to fill up today.”

Just as oil prices spiked, Atlanta television stations began “trumpeting short supplies of gasoline and empty tanks at stations,” said former WAGA-TV reporter Doug Richards, who critiques local television news on the blog Live Apartment Fire (a wry reference to a commonly overplayed story). Most reporters, Richards said in an interview, pleaded for calm, urging motorists not to buy unneeded gas. But those pleas, Richards said, may have backfired.

“I’m reluctant to say TV helped contribute to the panic,” he said. “However, certainly a lot of those consumers of gasoline watched TV and put two and two together” and headed out to buy gas.

The shortage was a natural television story, Richards said, combining human drama – angry, anxious motorists – with strong visuals of cars lined up for gas.

“The media didn’t cause the supply in the pipeline to be diminished,” Richards said. “The media didn’t cause the hurricane. If there had been some kind of media collusion not to report it, I think that would have been a bigger problem.”

Staff writer Jeremy Redmon contributed to this article.