Our area's primary gas supplier has a message for those panicked drivers rushing to fill their tanks when they normally would not do so - please stop doing so.

Douglass Distributing released this statement regarding community concern on the area's fuel supply.

"Douglass Distributing and Lone Star Food Stores would like to educate everyone on the current fuel shortage that we are experiencing.

"The shortage is a result of a southern refinery shutting down temporarily during the storms of Hurricane Harvey. We want everyone to know that we still have access to plenty of fuel -- the lines that our delivery trucks are waiting in are just much longer because of the refinery shut down.

"There is NO outage. There is fuel. Each delivery is just taking longer right now.

"We want to assure everyone that we have all of our delivery trucks out running 24 hours resupplying our local communities in Northeast Texas and South Eastern Oklahoma.

"We ask all of our neighbors make fuel purchases as you normally would -- the worst thing we can do as a community is all of us showing up at one time to get fuel. This is creating an additional challenge for each delivery.

"If the community reacts that way -- then we may cause the outage at an individual location.

"We do not expect the shortage to last any longer than 1 week."

The statement comes after a rush to gas pumps started around North Texas Wednesday night has left some stations with limited or no gas temporarily.