Gasoline Prices Soar, Supplies Tight in Wake of Hurricane
holesale gasoline prices continued to rise in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and retail outlets in many states already were feeling a supply pinch and raising prices well above $3 a gallon, news services reported Thursday.
Eight Gulf Coast refineries have been closed or flooded and pump prices yesterday jumped 50 cents or more Wednesday to more than $3 a gallon as far away as the Midwest, Georgia and mid-Atlantic states. One station in Atlanta was charging $5.87 a gallon for unleaded regular, Reuters reported.
One energy analyst said the first refineries will be back up in about a week and that pump prices could remain at $3.50 to $4 a gallon until normal supplies resume, Bloomberg reported.
Asked if U.S. oil companies should forfeit profits during the crisis, President Bush said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" Thursday that U.S. corporations should instead contribute cash to hurricane relief funds, Reuters reported.
Colonial Pipeline Co., the largest petroleum pipeline operator, said on its Web site Tuesday that it was close to restarting a pair of fuel pipelines that were cut when the company lost power Monday when Katrina hit.
Plantation Pipe Line Co., which has a pipeline that runs from Baton Rouge, La., through six states into the Washington, D.C., region, said its main gasoline pipeline was mostly idle, the Washington Post reported.
Placid Refining Co. said it will start receiving a 1 million-barrel crude oil loan from the government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Wednesday DOE will open.
Bodman said the government has received at least three requests from companies for SPR loans.
Workers at the large Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which did not sustain major damage from the hurricane, were preparing to begin unloading fuel tankers again on Thursday, Bloomberg reported.
Port Fourchon, La., which sustained flooding from the storm and is a major intake land port for oil and gas from the Gulf of Mexico, reopened Wednesday, Bloomberg said.
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