Florida’s Fuel Dwindling as State Braces for Hurricanes: Energy
By Christine Harvey and Lynn Doan May 7, 2014 12:16 PM ET
Florida, the biggest gasoline market on the U.S. East Coast, is enduring a supply squeeze and higher prices just a month before the start of the hurricane season.
The state, surpassed only by California and Texas in gas consumption, has no refineries and relies on tanker and barge deliveries for 97 percent of its supply. Retail gasoline has risen to the third-highest level ever seasonally and stockpiles are about 7 percent lower than a year ago.
Florida’s fuel market underscores how the shale-oil revolution created winners and losers, with the Gulf Coast awash in cheap crude and other regions missing out because they lack transportation and refining capacity. A shortage of U.S.-flagged tankers that Florida relies on for deliveries and hurricanes after June 1 may spur higher prices.
“People are thinking we’re flush with oil and that there’s more stability and lower prices,” Ryan Mossman, a vice president at FuelQuest Inc., a fuel management firm in Houston, wrote in an e-mail May 5. “What we’re seeing in Florida exposes the fragility that still exists in the supply chain.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-06/florida-s-fuel-dwindling-as-state-braces-for-hurricanes-energy.html
