Apr 22, 2006 10:27 am US/Eastern
Drivers Working Overtime To Avoid Gas Shortage
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ―
State officials are relaxing rules on how many hours gas tanker drivers may work.
Until Wednesday, drivers in the Philadelphia area will be allowed to work for 14 hours a day—three hours longer than normal. That's because of problems with gas stations running out of fuel lately.
The supply problems have occurred from New Hampshire to Virginia as refiners stop using a gasoline additive that's been found to contaminate groundwater. Doing so means draining the wholesale tanks in preparation for the switch, causing distribution problems
Pumps ran dry at scattered gas stations as fuel terminals and stations struggled to adapt to ethanol in fuel mixes, causing some customers to hark back to widespread gasoline shortages of the past.
Catherine Rossi, a spokeswoman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said she knew of eight stations in the Philadelphia region that were out of fuel on Thursday.
Four of the 40 stations Liberty Petroleum L.L.C. supplies in the Philadelphia region ran out of fuel in the last two days as its tanker trucks made futile trips from terminal to terminal, said company spokesman Wayne Hummel.
Jai Kulkarni, owner of a Kwik Farms convenience store and a Lukoil station, said he was out of gas for about four hours on Wednesday, losing about $200 an hour in sales.
At the station Thursday, Vinnie Zambuto, 31, of Coatesville, said he never saw a gas station run dry before he encountered one last week.
But Zambuto said he had heard tales from his parents of gas shortages of the 1970s, and hoped the current supply stumbles would be short-lived.
Refiners are switching to fuel formulations containing corn-based ethanol, prompted by the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005, and ethanol's affinity for water requires extensive work both at fuel terminals and the service stations themselves.
Retailers must clean their tanks, remove all water and install extremely fine filters on their pumps. Terminals have to clean tanks to store the ethanol and install equipment to blend it with the gasoline.
Independent gasoline distributors said few terminals had gasoline on Thursday. A Pacific Energy Partners L.P. terminal that did was filling trucks in only two of its five lanes, with waiting times of four hours. "We are doing our best to activate the others," said Jennifer Shigei, a company spokeswoman.
Refiners declined to go into detail about the supply situation, but Shannon Breuer, a spokeswoman for Sunoco Inc., said the company was "focused on being a reliable supplier" and was confident any problems would be short-term.
AAA warned that supply disruptions could continue for the next few weeks, however, as terminals and stations deal with the new blends, and that could drive soaring pump prices still higher.
On Friday, the average nationwide price of gasoline was $2.86 a gallon, about 60 cents higher than the start of the year. The price of crude oil settled at a record above $75 a barrel.
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