NYC gas shortages

[asterroc]

My father's baffled by the gas shortage in NYC, so I cobbled together my best explanation of why, revised below.

1. Right after the storm, early last week: NY Harbor closed to tankers. Some gas stations had no power so there was less gas to go around. There's a gasoline pipeline into NYC, which may have been barely enough to meet the demand at first. At this time the main demand for gas is to run generators where there's no power.


2. A day or two after the storm, middle of last week: Those gas stations which did have power began running out of gas without sufficient resupply. Businesses reopen, but much of NYC public transit does not, increasing the usage of gas as people drive to work.


3. End of last week: NY Harbor opened around Thursday last week, but it takes time for that gas to work its way into the system. Meanwhile, people driving to work are starting to need to gas up.


4. Last weekend and early this week: More of the same, but panic buying sets in, which more than offsets the reduced need for gasoline for generators.


5. Middle of this week: The gasoline pipeline into NYC suffers some sort of damage, and I think that was the straw that led Gov. Cuomo to ration gas in NYC and Long Island.

The NY Times seems to confirm aspects of my points 1-4.

Does anyone have things I left out, or different explanations?

Originally posted on Dreamwidth. comments there. Comment here or there.

Comments

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

My understanding was that power to gas stations was a bigger problem than actual supply. Those stations that did have the ability to pump gas ran out quicker than their scheduled deliveries expected, but it wasn't that the actual supply was particularly low.

Certainly I think panic buying was part of it, but I don't think it was panic buying in the sense of fear that the city was going to descend into anarchy. People were just worried that they would end up stranded somewhere without gas. I spoke to co-workers with relatively long commutes, and they said that they have been constantly worrying if they got to a quarter tank left that they may not be able to find a place to refill, so they went in to refill at a higher level than they normally would. Of course, this means more frequent refillings at lower quantities, but doesn't help the problem of gas lines.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

My understanding was that power to gas stations was a bigger problem than actual supply.

I agree that was true in the first few days, but at this point most gas stations have had power restored, and yet there's still a huge gas shortage problem.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

Huh... around here, the lines have been gone for about two or three days, and disappeared basically as soon as power was restored to all the gas stations.

Looking into it more, it seems that the major missing factor now is the lost refinery capacity. Once reserves were depleted, there's going to be a supply shortfall until they're all brought back online.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, from what I hear gas lines in Manhattan and parts of Queens (at least Flushing/Whitestone/Bayside) are bad. I mean, things have got to be bad somewhere since Cuomo declared odd/even gas rationing.

If there's a bunch of refineries in NJ which aren't producing, that would flesh out my picture of what's going on and help explain the continued shortages.