Gas tankers filled up and gasoline flowed at the Chevron Doraville Terminal at 4026 Winters Chapel in DeKalb County on Friday, May 14, 2021. (John Spink/John [email protected])
By Kelly Yamanouchi
Metro Atlanta’s gas shortage continued Wednesday morning, with 47% of stations lacking fuel, according to GasBuddy.com.
That marks a continued gradual improvement since last Thursday, when 73% of gas stations in the metro area were without fuel after the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline last week, according to GasBuddy spokeswoman Allison Mac.
It was also a little better than noon Tuesday, when an estimated 51% didn’t have gas.
The pipeline’s operations restarted a week ago, but “it’ll probably take another week for things to return back to normal,” Mac said Wednesday. That’s partly because “the gas supply was so depleted by the time it was operating again, mainly because of panic and anxiety from people filling up more than they have to.”
GasBuddy.com lists gas availability and prices based on crowd-sourced entries by drivers.
The good news is that gas demand nationally has declined 7% from last week, an indication that people’s gas tanks are full and they’re not filling up again, Mac said.
“Basically half of metro Atlanta gas stations are still without fuel, so this is not the time for people to start doing donuts in the parking lot with their cars,” she said. “It’s still a time where you should be conservative in order to speed up the recovery.”
One looming issue is Memorial Day coming up at the end of the month, traditionally a popular weekend for road trips. AAA forecast that more than 1.1 million people in Georgia would take a trip during the holiday weekend.
For Georgia as a whole, the Atlanta area has the highest percentage of outages at gas stations. In the Augusta area, a smaller share of 33% of stations are without fuel, while Macon has 17% of stations out of fuel, Mac said. South Carolina has 38% without fuel, while Florida has 14% of stations out of gas.
Large players like Costco, Sam’s Club and Kroger have contracts for wholesale fuel. Many other gas stations are small businesses owned by a family, and securing fuel supply amid a shortage “depends on their relationship and their contract with the refineries,” according to Mac.
GasBuddy’s list of top gas stations and cheap fuel prices in Atlanta on Wednesday morning listed prices at a variety of stations ranging from $2.49 to $2.99 a gallon.
Read the original story on AJC.com.
