Metro Atlantans are hunting for working gas pumps — and paying more when they find them — as uncertainty continues about the scope and duration of a gasoline pipeline break in Alabama that is crimping supply.
The average price of regular in metro Atlanta was $2.50 a gallon early Tuesday, up from $2.16 a week earlier, according to GasBuddy. The price spread was dramatic, with some stations charging more than $3 while a few stubbornly clung to sub-$2 prices, according to the website.
Gasoline deliveries are still being made to convenience stores, but in many cases they are limited. That’s created a seemingly random patchwork of open and closed stations.
Bridgett Miller of Stone Mountain said she found no gasoline in an early morning search Monday but was luckier in the late afternoon.
“Everybody was talking about it at the childcare center I work at” in Chamblee, she said, filling up a Lexus at a Citgo in Doraville. “It’s putting a lot of people in a bad way.”
A QuikTrip along I-85 at Hamilton Mill Road ran dry, but customers swooped in as soon as a tanker truck pulled in with a load of regular.
Clint Butler and Dylan Vaughan waited 10 minutes for the pumps to crank up again, hoping to fill generator tanks and the gas tank for the truck they drive for a Suwanee flooding restoration business. Their bosses, Butler said, had told them “to make sure we don’t get stranded somewhere.”
The broken line in Alabama is owned and operated by Alpharetta-based Colonial Pipeline. It is one of two the company uses to move fuel from Gulf Coast refineries through Atlanta and up to the northeast.
While hundreds of workers struggle to patch the pipe and set up a bypass around the damage – all without igniting more than a quarter million gallons of spilled gasoline – consumers from Atlanta up the east coast are coping with the impact of the 10-day-old leak.
The company says the bypass pipe should restore full flow sometime this week, but it hasn’t been more specific.
On Monday, Gov. Nathan Deal signed an executive order preventing stations from significantly hiking prices. State law prevents gas gouging during a "state of emergency," which Deal declared in a separate executive order last week. The law allows gas stations to only hike prices based on the increased cost of transporting fuel.
Convenience store chains and other wholesale customers are scrambling for alternative sources, which partly accounts for the scattered nature of the outages.
Colonial has used a second pipe, normally dedicated to other types of fuels, to keep some gasoline moving. It has declined to say how much less gasoline than usual is reaching metro Atlanta.
An official at Oklahoma-based QuikTrip said the company is getting half its usual gasoline. It’s worse for some. One Carroll County fuel company told the AJC its normal allocation of 50,000 gallons a day has been slashed to 11,000 – and it often just gets just one tanker-load of less than 9,000.
Colonial, which initially underestimated the extent of the spill, said more than 600 workers are working parallel plans: one to repair the line, the other to add pipe that would take gasoline around the problem.
It’s not surprising how long repairs are taking, said James Williams, chief economist at WTRG Economics, an Arkansas-based energy consulting company.
“It is not a small deal, and it is worse because you are working with an explosive product,” he said. “One spark could make everything go boom… It is a really big logistical problem to solve.”
Typically, the system has nearly 20 days supply of gasoline, including product in storage tanks and the pipeline, Williams said. But as word of tighter supply gets out, worried drivers can quickly deplete stocks.
“The first day, everybody goes out and fills up and there goes half your inventory,” Williams said.
Sharon Martinez of Dallas said she understands how worry about going dry causes drivers to make things worse for themselves, but it aggravates her anyway.
“Just like when the stores run out of bread and milk whenever the weatherman mentions a snowflake is coming,” she said. “But as a result of that fear, people are perhaps overdoing it. I saw people filling up gas cans and boats. This is probably not necessary and contributes to the shortage.”
The pipeline leak does not crimp the supply of jet fuel to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, so there is no effect on airline operations, an airport spokesman said. UPS said it is “operating in a normal fashion, and closely monitoring the situation with suppliers to ensure continued smooth operations.”
Many service vehicles use diesel fuel, which remains plentiful.
But there may be a slight tightening in diesel supply as well, since some pipeline space usually dedicated to diesel is being used for gasoline during the crunch, said Garrett Townsend, of AAA.
MARTA, whose buses use compressed natural gas or diesel, expected a rise in ridership but the numbers didn’t move much, a spokeswoman said.
DeKalb County School District spokesman Quinn Hudson said Monday that buses may be reduced to transporting students to and from school during the shortage. He said the district has access to three vendors as part of the North Georgia Fuel Cooperative, which includes 28 other school districts.
Staffers will meet with providers Tuesday to get additional information on how long the shortage could affect travel, he said.
Staff writers Craig Schneider, Russell Grantham, Kelly Yamanouchi, Matt Kempner, Marlon Walker, Bo Emerson and Greg Bluestein contributed to this story.
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