Gasoline starts flowing to hurricane-affected regions of Florida

It’s been about five days since Hurricane Milton made landfall and slammed into the Florida Gulf Coast in Sarasota, just south of Tampa. 

More than 400,000 customers in Florida were still without power as of Monday morning. As roads are cleared and power restored, critical products for modern living will start making their way back out to consumers, including gasoline.

Scott Long sheltered in place in his solid brick home near downtown Sarasota. Before the hurricane hit, he saw “a lot of people running around trying to get gas,” he said. “I did gas up before the storm.”

Everyone was topping off their tanks and filling their generators. That led to “a big surge in demand. Some of the gas stations did run out of gas,” noted Florida economist Sean Snaith.

After the storm, ports, transfer terminals and roads were closed, so tanker trucks couldn’t make deliveries. But the infrastructure has recovered quickly, according to Tom Kloza at the Oil Price Information Service in Fort Myers.

“We have seen power restored at the Port of Tampa,” he said.

Nearly half the state’s gas comes through there. “Terminals now are dispatching trucks that take about 8,000 gallons each to stations,” Kloza added.

Sean Snaith predicts 85% of them will have gas by today and be open. As long as the electricity’s on, that is, since you can’t pump gas without power.