Tag Archives: shortages

Local, National

Some Puget Sound gas stations running on empty with truckers in short supply

[KIRKLAND] – (MTN) Some Puget Sound residents were out of luck when they found a handful of area stations were out of gas – but this isn’t due to a gas crisis or shortage. A check on the Gas Buddy app indicated that about a dozen stations in the Kirkland-Bellevue-Woodinville area reported they were out of fuel this morning, with some complaints on social media. The culprit isn’t a lack of gasoline and diesel. It is a national shortage of truck drivers.

Trucking industry officials are reporting that the country is short approximately 50,000 drivers nationwide. Additionally, there is a shortage of engineers, mechanics, fuel carriers, and specialists to inspect and repair the tanks that haul gasoline and diesel. The deficit has been looming for years. The lack of drivers created a perfect storm at the pump with the arrival of the 4th of July holiday weekend and the end of COVID restrictions.

According to Business Insider, trucker pay has dropped as much as 50%, with the average annual salary falling to $50,000 a year. Long hours, time away from home, regulations, and technology that tracks time on task and driver actions caused an exodus of experienced drivers. Many drivers are paid by the mile, not by the hour. Inexperienced drivers are hit the hardest, and time spent during load, unloading, or inspections are not compensated.

When COVID restrictions slowed down the economy, many trucking companies laid off or offered early retirement to their drivers. The loss of experienced operators hit the motor fuel carriers hard.

Federal regulations require additional experience to haul motor fuel and other hazardous cargo and have more extensive background checks than regular cargo haulers. Insurance companies won’t cover inexperienced drivers, forcing motor fuel carriers to look for seasoned operators in an environment of low pay and low reward.

Independent truckers have been hit hard by several regulations and the debate over “gliders.” Gliders are older trucks that are remanufactured and cost 25% to 30% lower than a new rig. They are a popular choice for owner-operators to enable them to be competitive. EPA regulations have bounced around to force gliders to meet current EPA standards, essentially eliminating the remanufacturing industry. The 25% to 30% cost increase is enough to keep independent truckers from jumping in and forcing others out when their rigs require replacement.

The Pacific Northwest is practically a “closed-loop” system, with most crude oil processed in the region coming from Alaska. The Rocky Mountains create a significant engineering challenge to build large pipelines into the Pacific Northwest. Local refineries aren’t calibrated for tar sands from Canada, and Pacific Northwest ports are a long journey from the Middle East.

Almost all of the fuel Washingtonians use is refined in Washington state. Outages earlier this year in Texas and issues like the Colonial Pipeline shutdown have no material impact on our supply. These issues impact what we pay at the pump, despite being separated from the rest of the country.

Spot outages are expected to continue through the summer driving season, but local drivers should not have problems finding gas, even if their station of choice is empty at the time they need to fuel up.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the average price of gasoline in the Seattle area is $3.71 a gallon, an increase of a dollar a gallon from last year when COVID shut the country down. It is up 30 cents a gallon from 2019 and 35 cents a gallon from 2018.

Local, National

No, you don’t need to panic buy gasoline or diesel fuel, and no one needed to either

[SEATTLE] – (MTN) Yesterday scattered reports came in through the Puget Sound region of longer than normal lines at some gas stations as news spread of shortages in several southeastern states. Overnight the national average for the price of gasoline broke $3.00 a gallon for the first time in 7 years, while scenes of hoarding gasoline into tubs, trashcans, and in one case a plastic bag flooded the Internet. Anyone worried about gasoline shortages in the Pacific Northwest can relax, and so can almost all Americans.

The Colonial Pipeline feeds 45% of the gas, diesel, and aviation fuel used on the east coast from Texas to the northeastern states. The line was crippled by a Russian ransomware attack on Friday, and pipeline managers had to shut down operations to keep the attack from spreading to other systems. Over the weekend it appeared that operations would resume by Tuesday, but then officials said it may not be until May 15, or longer. That’s when the panic buying started.

On the east coast, Asheville, North Carolina was one of the first cities to report gasoline station closings, and spot closures spread through mostly southeastern states. According to TTAC, only 7% of the gas stations in the southeast were reporting they had run out of fuel. Like toilet paper just a year ago, buyers rushed to gas stations to buy every last drop, filling every container, including unsafe ones, with the fuel.

The issue spiraled from the comical to the dystopian with fights breaking out at gas stations. In North Carolina, 2 people were arrested after a fight described as, “wild,” erupted after a woman tried to cut into a queue for gas, and then rammed a car.

The Pacific Northwest is nearly a closed-loop for vehicle and aviation fuel. The Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains create natural boundaries that make it challenging to ship crude and refined products to our region.

For oil tankers, the trip from the Middle East is a long journey to our corner of the country. The Rocky Mountains prevent large pipelines from reaching our region, so almost all of the crude oil that is turned into fuel for the Pacific Northwest comes from Alaska and is refined in Washington state. Because refineries have to be calibrated to accept certain crude oil products based on the viscosity and how sour it is, using Canada tar sand oil isn’t a viable alternative.

Because Washington and Oregon, and parts of Idaho and California, are in this isolated region our supply is unique and isolated from disruptions east of the Rockies. However, our region is not isolated from national price fluctuations. The Pacific Northwest bears the brunt of market price increases when national averages increase, even when our supply chain isn’t disrupted. There is additional price pressure with the Memorial Day weekend, and the start of driving season, less than 3 weeks away.

Earlier today, officials from Colonial Pipeline announced that fuel was once again flowing, days ahead of schedule. It will take several days for the fuel supply to stabilize, but the best thing consumers can do is not panic buy.

The Russian hacker group DarkSide claimed responsibility for the ransomware attack, but stated they were only interested in making money, and not committing an act of aggression. Russian officials distanced themselves from the group, citing they had no involvement in the hack, and that it was not state-sanctioned.

Over a 9 month period in 2020, the Russian government committed a series of cyberattacks on multiple United States government agencies in what is called the worst breach of government data security in history. Known as the SolarWinds attack, Russian agents used software vulnerabilities within SolarWinds, VMware, and Microsoft. The scope of the attack was revealed in December 2020.