() – Hurricane Milton passed through Florida days ago, but the devastating storm continues to cause problems at gas stations.
Hundreds of gas stations in Florida are still out of gas, including about half of the stations in the hard-hit Tampa area.
Floridians lucky enough to access working gas stations often find themselves stuck in long lines. And tensions have increased as fights have been reported over access to gasoline.
The good news is that help is on the way and vessels carrying gasoline are expected to arrive in Tampa in the coming days. Meanwhile, the number of service stations without gasoline decreased sharply.
The bad news is that experts say it could still be several days before the situation returns to normal.
“I would expect the headache to subside significantly over the next 2 to 5 days for Tampa, but there could be lingering outages for another 7 to 10 days as the stations catch up,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.
De Haan indicated that for the rest of the state there should be “very notable” improvements in the coming days and the situation should return to normal in 5 to 10 days.
As of 1 pm ET on Monday, 17.3% of Florida gas stations were out of fuel, up from 33.2% on Sunday afternoon, according to GasBuddy.
This represents a considerable improvement, although it still means that more than 1,300 gas stations in Florida remain empty five days after Hurricane Milton made landfall.
Nearly half (49.9%) of the Tampa metropolitan area’s 1,801 gas stations were out of fuel Monday afternoon, GasBuddy reported. That’s a drastic decrease from 87.5% Sunday afternoon and the first time below 50% since Wednesday.
The problem is that Florida relies heavily on the Port of Tampa Bay for fuel deliveries from Gulf Coast refineries. More than 43% of Florida’s gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel moves through this key piece of infrastructure.
There are no pipelines distributing gasoline to the region to satisfy Florida’s daily appetite for 20 million gallons of gasoline.
According to FEMA, there are 70 million gallons of gasoline and other petroleum products on their way to Tampa in the next seven days.
Although the Port of Tampa Bay reopened the saturday morning after avoiding the catastrophic flooding that some feared, it has not operated at full capacity. Vessel movement has been restricted to daylight and one-way traffic, slowing the port’s ability to receive fuel.
Another problem is that analysts say some fuel terminals near the Port of Tampa Bay and Port Manatee have not reopened. That limits 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 destined for Tampa gas stations cannot leave ships.
“Things are piling up,” said Andy Lipow, president of consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates. “There are over 30 million gallons of fuel waiting outside of Tampa Bay, waiting to come in and they can’t because of one of these problems.”
Lipow is hopeful that by the end of the week, the fuel situation should return to normal. The key, he noted, is when the Port of Tampa Bay can fully reopen.
Anxious drivers in the Tampa area face long lines and frustration has sometimes turned ugly.
The Pasco Sheriff’s Office said Friday that it received “numerous service calls about disputes and arguments” at gas stations in Pasco County, which is just north of Tampa.
“We realize demand is great and frustration may be high as fuel companies work to replenish essential supplies, but we encourage 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 station he told Fox 13 that customers got into fist fights.
“A girl hit another girl with her car, they were really fighting over gas… We had to call the police,” the security guard said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said officials are doing everything they can to get fuel supplies where they are needed, including highway patrol escorts for fuel tankers.
The state opened multiple public fuel sites where customers can receive 10 gallons of gasoline each for free.
However, those free gas sites have sometimes been overwhelmed.
At one location in St. Petersburg, the line for gas was several blocks long Sunday and had to be temporarily suspended 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. Very slow,” he said.
The outages at service stations underscore how vulnerable the region is to supply disruptions and demand spikes.
Gasoline demand soared last week as millions of Florida residents heeded evacuation orders and others filled tanks to power generators.
Although the Gulf Coast maintains an additional supply of fuel, local regions often do not. They typically operate under what is known as “just-in-time inventory,” where they only receive what they would normally need.
“It runs 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 have a disruption, ‘just in time’ can become simply intolerable. “That’s what we’ve seen in the last few days.”
According to Kloza this is particularly true in the Tampa area because of how much the region relies on the Port of Tampa Bay for fuel deliveries.
“I think this will largely go away,” Kloza said. “By Wednesday or Thursday you will see gasoline everywhere and there will be no fights at the stations.”
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