Hurricane Harvey

[Neal]

Residual effects here in Dallas. The vast majority of stations are out of gas and the lines at the ones that do have gas are quite long. The Costco across the street from my work has 6 lines and every line has 50 to 60 cars in it. And report of some stations raising their prices to as much as $8 per gallon.

 

[JEBar]

in our area (just south of Raleigh, NC) gasoline prices have risen 30 to 50 cents a gallon and diesel has risen about 30 cents a gallon

 

[Lil4X]

Retailers across the country are raising prices for gas in an anticipated shortage of supply here in the next few months. Harvey shut down most of our deepwater rigs in the Gulf - and rather than getting production back on stream in a few days, her lingering effects meant that most rigs were sitting in place, storm chokes set, and a skeleton crew onboard. It's going to take at least another week to get them back in production, but we have a disturbance brewing off Northern Mexico that might be affecting the Texas coast by the middle of next week.

The storm caused crude tankers waiting offshore Texas and Louisiana ports to run to deeper water for sea room, and prepare to ride out the high winds and heavy seas that a Cat 3 or 4 storm can produce. With no input to the refineries, the output of products would have to taper off as the plants would run through their reserve stocks in days or weeks, even at minimal production rates.

Elsewhere on the refining side, about 75% of our nation's oil and gas is refined in process plants between Corpus Christi and Lake Charles. With Harvey coming in, they went to "standby" mode, then to "cold iron" as the storm slowed to a crawl off the Texas coast. You can get away with stopping or slowing the refining process for a day or two until the storm passes, but eventually if the storm slows down, you have to quench the burners and secure the chemical process in place. That's going to mean a slow recovery, maybe two weeks until the plant can be inspected and certified to be re-lit. Overall, we could be out of the gasoline business well into September, meaning fuel costs will go up as sources go to reserves.

It won't be catastrophic though - speculators believe wholesale price advances will spike about 20¢ to 40¢ per gallon higher, and they should fall considerably lower by October-November, because with fewer cars on the road in the winter months, demand decreases and motor gasoline gets "cheaper". Don't worry about the oil refiners though, they're going to make up the loss of sales with home heating oil this winter . . . until early spring when demand for mogas will go up and we turn off our furnaces. As the summer driving season approaches, gas prices will go up again - and were back on the see-saw. Again. Elio's 84/49 mpg is looking better all the time.

 

[JEBar]

Harvey's rain has moved into our area in central NC .... thankfully, he's only a reflection of his former self .... that said, his rain is coming down hard enough to kill our satellite TV signal

picture below less than 15 minutes after it started .... easy to understand how the areas were it rained for days had so much flooding

 

[Coss]

Harvey's rain has moved into our area in central NC .... thankfully, he's only a reflection of his former self .... that said, his rain is coming down hard enough to kill our satellite TV signal

Ehhhhh Since you get the weather for the area, what is Darlington looking like? And how far away is that?

 

[JEBar]

passing showers today and tomorrow .... no rain Sunday

 

[Coss]

Cool, thanks JEBar

 

[JEBar]

update :

yesterday a major hail storm from Harvey moved through our area .... golf ball to baseball to softball hail .... pictures below show rear window damage to my wife's Camaro .... my Chevy truck was hammered .... thankfully no glass damage

 

[Coss]

Bummer!! I hope your insurance covers it.
And with all the vehicles you have, you should consider a barn to park them all in, or one of those quick up quansit (sp?) huts that go up in a day.

 

[JEBar]

so far, the response from our insurance company has been good .... instant authorization has been received to have the broken vehicle window glasses replaced ..... we are scheduled to have the one replaced in our Sportchassis this coming Thursday .... with tomorrow being a holiday, we hope to get hold of Staflight early Tuesday morning and have them add the replacement of the windshield in our 2005 Trailblazer and rear window in our 2016 Camaro .... the window damage in the Camaro prevents is from being driven .... appointments have been made to take all vehicles in for estimates but with the growing reports of hail damage throughout our area, I anticipate it taking a while to actually get the repairs completed .... our camper also experienced some damage, thankfully none major ..... we don't anticipate taking it out again until November .... I plan to take care of those issues myself .... we are somewhere in line for an adjuster to access the damage to our home siding and gutters