The Patriot

Ike's potential causes spike

Tony Gloster

Issue date: 9/24/08 Section: Campus

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Media Credit: Gloster, Tony

Early Thursday evening, an alarm went out; because of the potential damage to refineries in the path of Hurricane Ike, gas stations could run out of gas due to diminished supply. As of Thursday night, the lines at the pump were long, the prices for gas had gone up and at least two gas stations in the Florence area were completely out of gas.
The lines at the Murphy Oil station in the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Irby were ten to 20 cars long each. The police were on hand to maintain order and traffic flow.
The Shell station on West Evans Street was completely empty, even after increasing their prices from $3.60 to $3.93 in just a matter of hours.
And by 11 p.m., the Citgo on the corner of 2nd Loop and Irby had increased it's prices to $4.59 per gallon of regular.
Because of these increased prices, the Attorney General of South Carolina invoked the states price gouging prohibition statute.
Price gouging is the charging of an "unconscionable price" not due to additional costs or market fluctuations. Price gouging carries a civil penalty of up to $5,000 per violation, as well as a criminal penalty of a $1,000 fine and up to thirty days in jail.
Amongst all the speculation, the facts remain that Ike hit the gulf coast of Texas early Saturday morning (September 13th).
Oil production rigs and twenty six refineries located in the region which make up roughly 25 percent of the refining capacity of the United States were shut down and evacuated before the storm hit.
As a result of the additional unrefined crude oil on the market, oil prices have tumbled to around $90 a barrel.
The Energy Department estimates that because of hurricane Ike, refining was reduced by 3.9 million barrels per day, and 99.7 percent of crude and 98.4 percent of natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico was halted as of Sunday Sept. 15th.
Commuting students, such as Graham Burch, a senior majoring in sociology and his girlfriend Ashley Rivers, senior, majoring in English commute to Francis Marion from Cheraw, South Carolina every day and while they were already riding together to save gas, with roughly one-hunered miles to travel each day for school, the rising gas prices forced Burch to make more changes.
"I had to stop driving my car, a 2002 Infinity SUV, and we started using my Dad's car because it's better on gas," Burch said.
By switching to his dads car, a 1999 Honda Civic, Burch went from spending roughly 24 dollars a day, to now spending around $60 a week with the more efficient vehicle.
"I can understand why prices went up, but not to the extent that they did," Burch said. "I don't think they should have gone up as much as they did before they knew the extent of the damage."

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