Florida drivers waited in long lines and in some cases came up empty trying to refuel their vehicles evacuating during Hurricane Milton.
As of Friday morning, almost 29% of Florida’s gas stations were sold out, according to GasBuddy gas analyst Patrick De Haan. That means roughly 2,320 of the state’s nearly 8,000 stations were out of fuel Friday morning.
“It may get slightly worse before it starts getting better,” he said on social media site X.
Seventy-three percent of stations in the Tampa and St. Petersburg areas were without gas, according to GasBuddy. In Sarasota, 54% of stations were empty, followed by 42% of stations in Fort Myers and Naples, 40% of stations in Gainesville and 34% of stations in Orlando and Daytona Beach, according to the site’s fuel tracker.
Fuel supplies are incoming, but experts still say that motorists who don’t need gas should wait to visit a station.
“If you don’t need to go to the gas station, don’t,” Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates told CBS MoneyWatch. “You should not be running out to fill up.”
How long will it take to refuel?
Most of Orlando’s gas supply is delivered through the port of Tampa, where there are 10 operating terminals. Major oil companies’ gas is then shipped to Orlando through a pipeline. The port is still working to restore power to the terminals so that they can receive supplies, Lipow explained.
“You need to get workers, terminal operators and truck drivers back, and the Coast Guard needs to inspect the channel for debris, and replace any navigational buoys. All that stuff is happening as we speak,” he said. In his estimation, gas deliveries by tankers won’t happen until Sunday at the earliest.
Ports that serve the rest of Florida are open, he noted.
“It’s going to get better. They are going to get gas,” he said. “There is a lot of gas headed to Florida, but the biggest impediment right now to resupply is getting electricity back to the Port of Tampa.”
Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), said he expects the “gas crisis” to be fully resolved within 72 hours.
“By Tuesday or Wednesday, it will be back to normal,” he told CBS MoneyWatch.
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