John Boyle

jboyle@citizen-times.com

Latest news: Gas shortages still seen despite pipeline fix.

A tanker truck sighting can cause near mass hysteria these days in Asheville.

"When they seen the truck come in, it was crazy," Sheenan Knox, an employee of the Citi-Stop Shell station in Biltmore Village, said Monday morning. "People were pulling in right away. It's probably not going to last too much longer — we only have regular, and we've only got a few hundred gallons left at this point."

The origin of the gas shortage is legitimate, but panic buying has worsened the supply in the mountains. A Sept. 9 pipeline spill in Alabama that released more than 250,000 gallons led to a shortage in fuel and an increase in gas prices in several Southeastern states, a situation that could last throughout the week.

But frantic motorists topping off tanks has exacerbated the problem.

"We’re thinking this is all going to resolve itself within this next week," said Steve Phillips, a spokesman for AAA Carolinas, which tracks gas supply and pricing. "It's going to take stations a while to catch up with the disruption, but we are seeing more and more stations getting the fuel they need."

Gov. Pat McCrory issued a state of emergency declaration for North Carolina on Friday so more tanker trucks could hit the road, but when news of the shortage hit the airwaves and news outlets Friday, motorists started hitting the gas stations — hard.

"I think the more consumers are filling up that extra tank of gas, you’re causing a higher demand," Phillips said.

The shortage, coupled with over-buying, created a snowball effect similar to a winter snowstorm when consumers go crazy buying milk and bread, Phillips said.

"I think it's freaking out," said Wayne Parham, who pumped $15 worth of gas, at $2.19 a gallon, into his Ford Escape at the Citi-Stop Monday morning.

He buys and sells pallets for a living and had a trailer load behind his vehicle Monday morning.

"You've got to make sure you've got it," Parham said. "You never know when it will be there, and then you might not get it."

Newlyweds Cynthia and Douglas Stone made no bones about freaking out. In Asheville after their nuptials, they've been stuck in their hotel room for a couple of days, afraid if they drove around to see the sights they might not have enough gas to get back home to Danville, Virginia.

Cynthia Stone said she's even been cooking simple meals in their hotel room. She also mentioned that Douglas has a broken right leg, adding to their stress level.

"I'm not supposed to be cooking on my honeymoon!" she said with a laugh. "We were so thankful to find a station that had gas this morning."

"We were freaking out. We didn't know how we were going to get home," Douglas Stone said. "My daddy, 85 years old, was going to fill up a barrel and bring it on down here so we could get home."

Scott Shealy, president of Citizens Fuel Co. in Asheville, which supplies 17 local stations, including Citi-Stops, said panic buying fueled by breathless media reports are causing much of the shortage problem. This shortage is not as severe as the situation in 2008, when hurricanes shut down production at refineries in the Gulf Coast.

"In '08 we simply had no product," Shealy said. "We have product now, we just can’t get it where it needs to be using the normal channels. So you're seeing a lot of companies and industry groups working together to allocate product and get it where it needs to be in non-traditional ways."

In normal times, nearly 100 percent of the Asheville region's gas supply comes from terminals in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Shealy said. Now, industry workers are juggling tanker trucks to move product from Charleston, South Carolina, Charlotte and even from Ohio.

In some cases they're sending gasoline via barge up the East Coast to serve states farther north, or on barges navigating the Mississippi River to serve lower states, Shealy said. Prices may vary significantly, depending on how far away the gas came from, he added.

In '08, prices soared, passing $3.75 a gallon. The average in Asheville Monday was $2.23.

Before the crunch, Shealy said Citizens would receive 18-20 tanker truck loads of fuel each week, with each truck carrying 10,000 gallons. On Monday, about one-third to half of the stations they service had fuel.

"I have no idea what we'll get between now and tomorrow and the next day," he said. "Unfortunately, we’re not hearing much more from Colonial than (the media) and the general public. Colonial Pipeline has a long history of playing this stuff close to the vest."

Shealy said Colonial told buyers like his company that they hope to have the repairs to the pipeline made sometime this week.

In an update issued Monday, Colonial Pipeline, which operates the main gasoline artery for the Southeast, said it is moving gas through a second pipeline. This has allowed “all delivery markets to be served along the entire system, albeit in a reduced capacity,” the company said.

“Under normal circumstances, the Colonial Pipeline system transports approximately 2.6 million barrels of refined products each day, with Line 1 accounting for half of this volume,” the press release stated. “Colonial is currently shipping significant volumes of gasoline on Line 2, the distillate mainline, to help mitigate the impact of the service interruption to Line 1.”

At Ingles Markets, which operates 93 Gas Express sites, Chief Financial Officer Ron Freeman said they are "out at many sites and are getting sporadic shipments from time to time."

"We are in constant contact with everyone in our supply chain to get as much allocation as we can for the benefit of our customers," Freeman said. "Beyond that, I can't speculate."

In the meantime, at stores like the Biltmore Citi-Stop, Knox said simply, "People are freaking out." Some really need the gas for jobs or travel, she said, but others are unnecessarily topping off and even filling gas cans, "instead of letting other people fill up their cars."

Gracie McCarroll, a teacher at Emma Elementary School who runs the after-school program, said her Ford Crown Victoria was on "e," so she was grateful to see the Citi-Stop open. Driving Hendersonville Road Monday morning, the Citi-Stop was the first station she saw that actually had gas.

While she hadn't heard about the gas crunch, she said she's not surprised by it, as our society has become so dependent on the commodity.

"Why aren't we riding around in electric cars?" she said.

Colonial Pipeline Co. doesn’t expect to fully reopen its primary gasoline pipeline until next week, but crews are continuing work to repair it. Colonial said supply disruptions would be felt in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.

McCrory took executive action Friday afternoon to increase the number of fuel truck deliveries and mitigate possible impacts on the state's fuel supply. McCrory and governors in Alabama and Georgia issued state of emergency declarations to deal with the effects of the pipeline spill.

"We are working with state and national officials to make sure North Carolina is not impacted by this leak," McCrory said in a statement.

He signed an executive order temporarily waiving hours of service restrictions for fuel vehicles traveling in and through the state, according to a news release.

"This executive order will help protect our motorists from excessive gas prices and ensure an uninterrupted supply of fuel that is essential for the health, safety and economic well-being of businesses, consumers and visitors in North Carolina," McCrory said.

The leak is centered in Helena, Alabama, about a half-hour south of Birmingham. The gas line, which runs from Houston to New York, travels through Alabama and Georgia, then through South Carolina and North Carolina, snaking through Charlotte and Greensboro.

Much of Western North Carolina's gas supply comes from terminals in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Charlotte.

Scotty Rice, manager of the Exxon Gas Station in the 1300 block of Patton Avenue, said Monday morning he's been out of gas since Saturday night. He was hoping to get a truck in by the early afternoon Monday, but he was not banking on it.

He saw plenty of panic buying on Saturday as his tanks ran dry.

"I don’t have an explanation for it," Rice said. "Maybe if the pres hadn't announced it as quickly as they did, maybe everybody wouldn't have gone out to buy gas. Maybe we would've had an extra day or two supply."

Gas prices did escalate at stations that actually had fuel, but not astronomically, according to AAA Carolinas. The average price for regular unleaded Monday was $2.23 a gallon, up from $2.21 on Sunday.

Staff Writer Abigail Margulis contributed to this report.

Gas prices rise as shortage spreads