Gas Prices go up as crude slumps in the wake of Harvey havoc on U.S. refineries

Sep 1, 2017 - 4:19 am EDT @theindpanorama United States 0

Labor Day weekend travel is likely to be costlier

DALLAS (TIP): Drivers in northern Texas are rushing to fill up their gas tanks as prices at the pump in the area rise and some stations run out of fuel altogether as Harvey continues to wreak havoc.

QuikTrip, a chain with 135 gas stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, is keeping about half of them without gas, said spokesman Mike Thornbrugh. “Our experience has been, if you try to keep every store full… you’ll run out,” he told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth. Strategically closing stations can help sustain supplies in different parts of the city, according to the company. QuikTrip maintains a list of stations that have gasoline available on its website.

Around Dallas, pumps at several service stations in places like Denton, McKinney and Little Elm are seeing gas shortages, leading customers to scramble.

“We heard there was going to be a shortage,” one driver told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth. “So, we hopped in the car and came and filled up.” A driver in Denton, northwest of Dallas, tweeted a photo of a line at the gas pump.

In downtown Dallas, some stations charged well over $3 for a regular gallon of gas Thursday, and one downtown Shell station charged $3.97, the Associated Press reported. At three gas stations in north Dallas, yellow bags or caution tape was wrapped around pumps just after noon.

The majority of North Texas gas stations are not expected to run out of gas, but costs are expected to rise. Gas prices in the region are up almost 20 cents from this time last week, CBS Dallas-Fort Worth reported. That jump comes just ahead of the Labor Day holiday weekend, which typically sees heavy driving.

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Thursday announced a release of a million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which, at a capacity of 713 million barrels, is the largest emergency crude oil supply in the world. The oil will be delivered to the Phillips 66 refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana, according to the Energy Department. That refinery has not been affected by the storm.