Laurren Wagner’s tank was more than half-full Friday, but she quickly turned around her SUV when she caught a quick glimpse of something at a Circle K near The Gallery at South DeKalb mall.
“I told my husband, when you drive by a gas station and see people using the pumps, you better yank your car in there,” the East Point resident said.
Two miles north on Candler Road, a BP station’s pumps were wrapped in black plastic. An electronic sign said gas was $0.00 per gallon. As manager Malik Bhanwadia lifted large ice bags, he said he’d just spoken with his fuel distributor.
“I asked when the gas was coming and he said he had no idea,” Bhanwadia said.
Fuel supplies slowly improved Friday after Colonial Pipeline began restarting operations late Wednesday. The Alpharetta-based company shut down its 5,500 miles of pipelines — typically carrying nearly half of East Coast fuel — for five days following a cyberattack. Colonial has cautioned it will take several days for deliveries to return to normal.
But nearly two in three stations in metro Atlanta were still out of gas, according to crowdsourced fuel tracker GasBuddy. About 63% of stations did not have fuel as of 4 p.m. Still, that was better than the 68% that lacked fuel on Thursday night.
Shortages appeared to be less severe in other parts of the state. About 53% of Georgia’s gas stations had fuel Friday afternoon, a slight improvement from 51% early Friday morning and 50% on Thursday night, according to GasBuddy.
Supplies also increased Friday in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and other southeastern states.
Gas stations should be back to normal next week if the pipeline restart goes as planned and consumers are convinced they no longer need to panic-buy fuel, said Richard Joswick, global head of oil analytics at S&P Global Platts.
Gov. Brian Kemp on Friday extended the suspension of the state’s gas tax to help control the price of fuel. His new executive order also extended an increase in weight limits for trucks carrying fuel and prohibited price gouging. The previous executive order had been scheduled to expire Saturday.
The Biden administration on Thursday approved a waiver to allow a foreign tanker to deliver gas to an East Coast seaport and may approve more waivers. Federal trucking rules also have been relaxed.
“The idea is to look at every … tool we have to help mitigate the shortage and get back to normal as quickly as we can,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a video interview Friday afternoon.
Stations without gas can expect to see deliveries starting this weekend and running through early next week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at a Friday briefing.
The price of gasoline fell slightly on Friday, another indicator that things were starting to return to normal. The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded in metro Atlanta rose a fraction of a penny to $3.059 from $3.058, according to AAA. The price had soared in the early days of the shortage. A week ago, a gallon averaged $2.75.
Demand will soar for trucking companies that specialize in hauling fuel from storage depots to gas stations, said Ed Crowell, CEO of the Georgia Motor Trucking Association. These companies will be “working overtime,” but a driver shortage that began before the gas crisis may complicate efforts to meet demand, he said.
The gas shortage also has made life difficult for drivers who work for ride-share services like Uber and Lyft.
“Gas is a form of currency,” said Ken Wainwright, who is working to organize Atlanta ride-share drivers.
“A full tank of gas could equal hundreds of dollars,” Wainwright said. “So not having gas is really depriving a lot of people from being able to support their families and support themselves. That’s what it means.”
Marietta resident Shaheed Malik, who drives for Lyft, said it’s been “like famine or feast” this week.
“If you’re a driver that can find a gas station, you’re going to feast,” Malik said. But “it’s like hit or miss.”
Malik said he’s picked up people who have their own cars, “but they couldn’t (drive to work) because they didn’t have gas in their car.”
Malik almost ran out of gas himself this week while out on the road. After dropping off an airport passenger and getting down to a quarter tank Thursday, he said he spent about 45 minutes looking for gas before finding it in Riverdale, where the station was rationing fill-ups to 10 gallons or about $30 worth.
-AJC staff reporters Tamar Hallerman and Greg Bluestein and the Associated Press contributed to this article.
