Monday, November 5, 2012

Gasoline availability in Hurricane Areas

The EIA has stood up a daily emergency survey of gas stations in the storm-hit areas:
Based on today's emergency survey of gasoline availability, EIA estimates that 27% of gas stations in the New York metropolitan area do not have gasoline available for sale. This is a decrease from 38% yesterday. This number includes stations that reported no gasoline available and those we could not reach after numerous attempts, and consequently assume that the station was closed. Of the stations sampled, about 73% (up from 62% yesterday) had gasoline available for sale, none reported they were not selling gasoline because they had no power (compared to 3% yesterday), 10% had power but no gasoline supplies, and 17% (down from 24% yesterday) did not respond to attempts to contact them.
This issue of gas shortages first really came to light on Thursday, and by Saturday the EIA had this survey going and was collecting tremendously useful data.  Impressive.  The federal government, normally extremely slow and bureaucratic, can move with incredible speed and agility when there's a major natural disaster a week before national elections.

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