Farmersville Food and Fuel Market – Shell station – located on Hwy. 380 was out of fuel Thursday afternoon after refineries were shut down due to Hurricane Harvey. Though fuel is taking longer than normal to arrive in the DFW metroplex distributors state that there is not a fuel outage and the shortage will only last approximately one week. (David Jenkins/The Farmersville Times.)
In a throwback to the Arab Oil Embargo in 1974, lines are forming at gas stations as motorists top off their tanks and fuel distributors are running out of the commodity.
Gas retailers throughout Farmersville and around North Texas started experiencing shortages Wednesday in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey that caused the closure of refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.
Quick Check located at 815 McKinney Street in Farmersville ran out of gas on Thursday, Aug. 31 around 11 a.m., according to Assistant Manager Trisha West and employees were constantly fielding telephone calls from customers inquiring whether they had fuel.
The gas station is hopeful that they will receive fuel today and noted that there is not a fuel crisis going on. Due to supply and demand coupled with the refineries being impacted by Hurricane Harvey it is taking longer to receive fuel shipments since they are transporting them in from other parts of the state.
“We have definitely seen customers being frustrated today,” West said.
Currently, gasoline is priced for $2.39 a gallon and $2.35 a gallon for diesel at Quick Check.
Brookshire’s in Farmersville also was out of gas mid-afternoon Thursday.
To ease everyone’s nerves, Douglass Distributing issued a statement including the following information:
“We want everyone to know that we still have access to plenty of fuel – the lines that our delivery trucks are waiting in are just much longer because of the refinery shut down. There is no outage. There is fuel. Each delivery is just taking longer right now. We want to assure everyone that we have all of our delivery trucks out running 24 hours resupplying our local communities in Northeast Texas and South Eastern Oklahoma.”
The distributor is encouraging citizens to make fuel purchases as they normally would.
“If the community reacts that way then we cause an outage at an individual location,” the statement said. “We do not expect the shortage to last any longer than one week.”
“While some refineries have shut down or are operating at reduced capacity due to Hurricane Harvey, plenty of refining capacity is still online and we have more than 230 million barrels of gasoline supply in Texas to meet needs,” Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton released in a statement. “Citizens have no need to fear shortages even though prices could climb during the next few weeks until all refining capacity is back online.”
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