Why so many Florida gas stations are still out of gas

New York
CNN
 — 

Hurricane Milton passed through Florida days ago, but the devastating storm is still causing chaos at gas stations.

Hundreds of gas stations in Florida still don’t have gas, including roughly half of the stations in the hard-hit Tampa area.

Floridians who are fortunate to access working gas stations often find themselves stuck in long lines. And tensions have flared, as fights reportedly have broken out over access to gas.

The good news is that help is on the way, as vessels carrying gas are expected to reach Tampa over the next few days. Meanwhile, the number of gas stations without gas has fallen sharply.

The bad news is that experts say it could still be several more days before the situation returns to normal.

“I would expect the headache to subside significantly in the next 2 to 5 days for Tampa, but there may be lingering outages for another 7 to 10 days as stations catch up,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

De Haan said that for the rest of the state, there should be “very noticeable” improvements in the next few days and the situation should return to normal in 5 to 10 days.

As of 1 p.m. ET on Monday, 17.3% of Florida’s gas stations had no fuel, down from 33.2% on Sunday afternoon, according to GasBuddy.

This represents a significant improvement, although it still means that more than 1,300 Florida gas stations remain dry five days after Hurricane Milton made landfall.

Nearly half (49.9%) of the Tampa metro area’s 1,801 gas stations were without fuel as of Monday afternoon, GasBuddy reports. That is down sharply from 87.5% on Sunday afternoon and the first time below 50% since Wednesday.

The problem is that Florida relies heavily on Port Tampa Bay for fuel deliveries from Gulf Coast refineries. More than 43% of Florida’s gas, diesel and jet fuel moves through the critical piece of infrastructure.

There are no pipelines delivering gas into the region to meet Florida’s daily appetite of 20 million gallons of gas.

According to FEMA, there are 70 million gallons of gas and other petroleum products inbound for Tampa over the next seven days.

While Port Tampa Bay reopened on Saturday morning after avoiding the catastrophic flooding that some feared, it has not been operating at full strength. Vessel movement has been restricted to daylight and one-way travel, slowing down the port’s ability to receive fuel.

Another issue is that analysts say some fuel terminals near Port Tampa Bay and Port Manatee have not reopened. That is limiting how much fuel these terminals can receive from vessels and prepare to be loaded onto trucks for delivery.

As a result, some of the fuel intended for Tampa gas stations can’t make it off vessels.

“Things are getting backed up,” said Andy Lipow, president of consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates. “There are over 30 million gallons of fuel sitting outside of Tampa Bay, waiting to come in and they can’t because of one of these issues.”

Lipow is hopeful that by the end of the week, the fuel situation should be back to normal. The key, he said, is when Port Tampa Bay is able to fully reopen.

Anxious drivers in the Tampa area are facing long lines and the frustration has at times turned ugly.

The Pasco Sheriff’s Office said Friday it received “numerous calls for service regarding disputes and arguments’ at gas stations in Pasco County, which is located just north of Tampa.

“We realize demand is great and frustration can be high while the fuel companies work through restocking essential supplies, but we urge you to be patient and respectful of others,” the Pasco Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

A security guard at a Tampa Bay Wawa told Fox 13 that customers got into fist fights.

“One girl hit another girl with her car, they were really fighting for gas … We had to call the police, because they were really being crazy,” the security guard said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said officials are doing everything they can to get fuel supplies where they’re needed, including having highway patrol escorts for fuel tanker trucks.

The state has opened up multiple public fuel sites where customers can receive 10 gallons of gas each for free.

However, those free gas sites have at times been overwhelmed.

At a site in St. Petersburg, the line for gas was blocks-long on Sunday and had to be temporarily cut off by police, according to the Tampa Bay Times. One woman told the newspaper she waited more than four hours for gas and advised others to bring food and water if they planned to go.

“These lines are slow. Real slow,” she said.

The gas station outages underscore how vulnerable the region is to supply disruptions and demand spikes.

Demand for gas skyrocketed last week as millions of Florida residents heeded evacuation orders, and others filled up tanks to power generators.

Although the Gulf Coast maintains plenty of extra supply of fuel, local regions often do not. They typically operate under what’s known as “just-in-time inventory,” where they only receive what they would normally need.

“It works like a well-oiled machine most of the time,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. “But when you get an interruption, ‘just-in-time’ can become just intolerable. That’s what we’ve seen the past few days.”

Kloza said this is particularly true in the Tampa area because of how much the region relies on Port Tampa Bay for fuel deliveries.

“I think this will largely disappear,” Kloza said. “By Wednesday or Thursday you’ll see gasoline everywhere and you won’t have fist fights breaking out at the pump.”