My car’s low fuel light flashed on Thursday at around 9 pm. I needed to find a gas station as soon as possible. Yet at this time of the day, in a city that’s battered by Hurricane Sandy and Northeaster, finding gasoline is also impossible. I drove by three gas stations and all of them were closed. Not long, I found one.
The end of the line was 15 blocks away. Three hours later, I got gas.
In New York City, many gas stations are still closed due to power outage and fuel shortage. Photo by Jianmin Ren/ People's Daily Online
The gas crisis in New York City is still serious ever since Sandy. The city’s gas price went up at about US0.15 a gallon in the past week. And the situation is exacerbated by Northeaster on Wednesday. The next day, November 8, New York City Mayor Bloomberg imposed an emergency order that instituting gas rationing, following New Jersey. Vehicles with even-numbered license plates can purchase gas on even days, and those with odd-numbered on odd days. Cars that end with a letter are counted as odd-numbered. People filling up with cans will not be affected.
「This is not a step that we take lightly. But given the shortages we will face over the next few weeks and the growing frustrations of New Yorkers, we believe it is the right step,」 Mayor Bloomberg said.
On Friday, police was seen enforcing the rule at all operating gas stations. People’s Daily Online USA reporter drove by a gas station in Woodhaven, Queens, and saw that the line was apparently shorter than the day before. Around 30 vehicles were waiting.
Gasbuddy.com, a website that has a fuel shortage tracker, tells drivers where to find gas and which stations still have fuel. As of Friday, in Queens, out of 25 gas stations, 13 of them were out of power or their tanks were top off. In Manhattan, 13 of 25 gas stations were operating. The Mayor said that only about 25 percent of the city’s 800 gas stations were operating at any given time.
In Hoboken, New Jersey, where the power outage caused by hurricane had severely affected gas supply, the govenment temporarily provided free gas to public. Photo by Shu Xu/ People's Daily Online
Gregg Laskoski, Senior Petroleum Analyst of the site, told People’s Daily Online USA reporter that the cause of this crisis is due to multiple elements that happened simultaneously. The first problem is the gasoline supply. In the weeks prior to Hurricane Sandy, the East Coast’s gasoline supply was already tight. While the refinery nationwide was operating at 87% of capacity, the East Coast’s refinery was only at 81% of capacity. After Sandy, the situation got worse in that the East Coast’s refinery was only operating at 58% of capacity. The decrease in supply was due to the damage Sandy made to several large refineries in New Jersey. Additionally, there were major petroleum terminals that also lost power, aggravating the supply problem. And Northeaster interrupted efforts to repair them . Then, the gas stations in New York and New Jersey lost power.
And next came people’s panic that compelled them to go out and buy gas and top off their tanks. 「When they do that , it really exacerbates the problem,」 Mr. Laskoski said. 「The rationing system that was imposed in New York will help alleviate some of that pressure on the supply, because it will keep a number of people from standing in line.」
Mayor Bloomberg said that fuel shortage will continue for several weeks.