Posted on 04/21/2006 5:13:16 AM PDT by Bloodclot
Gas stations in three East Coast states ran out of fuel on Thursday as gas prices soared. Shortages were reported in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania starting on Thursday afternoon. They could last as long as 30 days.
NBC 10 was live at one gas station when the pumps went dry at rush hour.
Catherine Rossi, a spokeswoman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, says she knows of eight stations in the Philadelphia region that were out of fuel yesterday.
Wayne Hummel of Liberty Petroleum says there's a derth of fuel in the New York and Philadelphia areas. He says four of the 40 stations Liberty supplies in the Philadelphia region ran out of fuel in the last two days.
Refiners are switching to fuel formulations containing corn-based ethanol, prompted by the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005. To do that, retailers must clean their tanks, remove all water and install extremely fine filters on their pumps. Terminals have to clean storage tanks, too.
An NBC 10 news team was at a Wilmington, Del., gas station on Thursday afternoon, where reporter Bill Baldini informed drivers pulling up to the pumps that the station was on empty.
On Thursday night, reporter Kristen Welker had the same experience at a Northern Liberties gas station. Closer to home for NBC10.com, a Luk Oil station just blocks from our station was out of gas as news trucks hit the street to report the Thursday afternoon news.
Stations in New Jersey and in several other Pennsylvania areas are also out of fuel, or only selling premium fuel, AAA told NBC 10.
Rossi said the shortages were expected to be temporary.
By temporary, AAA and other experts said the shortage situation could last for as long as 30 days.
The news was unwelcome to drivers who saw a big jump at the gas pumps recently.
On Thursday morning, NBC 10 reported that prices at some local gas stations had hit $3 per gallon.
An NBC 10 news van stopping in Conshohocken, Pa., saw gas selling for $3.09 for a gallon of regular unleaded at a local station.
Don't expect those prices to go down in the near future.
Overseas on Thursday, crude oil prices hit a new record intraday high of $72.49 after weekly data showed a drop in U.S. gasoline stocks.
This is raising worries that refiners don't have an adequate inventory cushion ahead of the peak summer driving season.
The previous record intraday price, set Wednesday, was $72.40 a barrel.
Don't forget CAFE regs that will kill SUVs. Better think about buying a new one and putting it in storage for 10 years.
If we had done REASONABLE THINGS(Nuke, Coal, Hydro-Electric) instead of wasting BILLIONS on pie-in-the-sky politicly-correct pipedreams like solar/wind, we wouldn't be in this boat, either........
We're HERE, NOW...
If we start TODAY, it's STILL going to take 10 years to dig out of this using technology we ALREADY have.....
Bravo Sierra
Sugar only works in Brazil because they have very low wages; third world safety standards, and the ethanol plants are based on the sugar plantations. Unlike corn, sugar beets and sugar cane must be processed within 24 hours of harvesting; therefore the ethanol plants must be at the location where it is grown.
Also, many people are killed in the Brazilian ethanol plants each year because there are no safety regulations and the plants and equipment are very poor quality construction. Explosions are common.
Brazil is one of the few places in the world where ethanol from sugar cane or sugar beets is profitable.
From an economic standpoint you can not profitably make ethanol from sugar if the cost of sugar is more than 6 cents a lb. The reason corn works in the US is because our harvesting is highly mechanized and the distribution infrastructure highly developed. There is virtually no sugar production anymore in the US.
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