Gasoline supply disruptions, Local

Last week, for the first time I can remember in the years I've lived here, two separate Mobil stations had gasoline supply problems.

One had little pink post-its on all their pumps saying 'NO REGULAR', and their lot was pretty much empty of cars.

A couple of days later, a different station had yellow 'do not cross' tape across its lanes and signs apologizing that due to supply problems, they had no gas at all.

Now, both are back in business as of a day or two after their little problems, and two anecdotal cases aren't enough to base any grand conclusions on. So I don't think I would be justified in saying Hmmmm, seems ominous.

I'll just say Hmmmm.

Anyone else seeing supply anomalies where you are?

  Energy   3 comment(s)  

I haven't noticed anything this year, but in the last 2 years, I have noticed a lot of gas stations going out of business. The Mobil station my father uses religiously back on Long Island was no longer allowed to use credit to pay for deliveries, so they were constantly out of gas until they had cash on hand to pay for a delivery. The Exxon station near our home in Germantown closed down completely, then re-opened, then closed down completely again less than a year later. I imagine someone else bought the franchise and then decided to shut it down before he lost any more money. I am friendly with a family who own a marina and stopped selling gas 20 years ago because the profits were a few pennies a gallon, yet the liability costs of having buried fuel tanks was through the roof. So I guess what I'm saying in business selling gasoline are on the cusp of failure at all times, so it wouldn't take much for them to run out.
      ...posted by Andrew on July 19, 2006 10:32 AM

We routinely see pumps shut down at a couple of 7-11s near us, but I think that has more to do with shoddy management than anything else, because this has been going on for a couple of years. I haven't seen anything like that at other stations.
      ...posted by Katxena on July 19, 2006 3:53 PM

Could have been the giant SUV I filled up drained it dry. Seriously, a lot of the times company owned stations will put the squeeze on private owned stations if they are competing.

Chris Carey
www.noheat.com

      ...posted by Chris Carey on September 21, 2006 8:21 PM

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