Petrol prices surge in Texas as Harvey flooding swamps production zones

Petrol prices in the US have jumped again following the devastation wrought by tropical storm Harvey, which has led to ongoing flooding in one of America’s largest oil production regions.

Since Harvey struck Texas as a hurricane last week, the cost of petrol has jumped about 17 cents. The national average price for a gallon of jumped 7 cents Friday, according to AAA, to $2.52 a gallon.

Some states were hit harder by the most recent price increase than other. In Georgia, for instance, the price of petrol has jumped by 29 cents in the week, and saw a 12 cent increase Friday. Texas has seen a 21 cent increase in the week, with 10 cents of that increase occurring overnight.

With the Houston area still impacted by devastating flooding and a storm that hit the region in a way that officials say they’ve never seen before, officials are concerned that refineries there may be compromised for weeks. Major refinery outages in the US Gulf Coast — impacting nearly 30 per cent of the nation’s refining capacity — forced the Trump administration to tap into the emergency Strategic Petroleum Reserve Thursday.

Consumers are feeling the tension. Concern that the petrol shortages might affect motorists in Dallas led to a run on petrol stations there, causing outages. But, experts indicated that they think the gas stations would have been fine if there was no run on the stations and if people would have relied on the gas they still had in their vehicles.

The nation’s largest refinery run by Motive in Port Arthur was forced to shut down Wednesday to the floods, and the Valero refinery in Port Arthur also closed down that day. The shutdowns have forced oil companies to stop moving oil through the Colonial Pipeline because there isn’t enough product to be moved — raising concerns by those who note that a closure of that pipeline last year after a leak caused a 20 cent a gallon increase for petrol in parts of the US.

But, those increases are nothing compared to prices seen by some in Texas who have encountered price gouging in the aftermath of the disaster. Officials are working to shut down price gougers, and implementing fines, after reports that some store owners are taking advantage of the devastating events of the past week.

Those reports include one saying that a convenience store in Houston was charging $20 for a gallon of petrol, $8.50 for a bottle of water, and $99 for a case of water, according to the Texas Attorney General’s office. That office has received at least 684 complaints of price gouging so far.