By Shariq Khan
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A growing number of gasoline retailers were flashing empty signs on Tuesday as panic-buying took hold of Florida, where residents are bracing for a monster hurricane to make landfall.
Hurricane Milton was downgraded to a Category 4 storm on Tuesday as it grinded past Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula en route to Florida's Gulf Coast where over 1 million people were ordered to evacuate. Parts of Florida are still recovering from Hurricane Helene, which battered the state at the end of September.
The storm is expected to make landfall on Wednesday.
As many as 15.8% of Florida's gasoline stations had run out of fuel by 11:10 a.m. Eastern Time [1510 GMT] versus almost no outages the prior morning, according to data from fuel markets tracker GasBuddy.
As people rush to get out of harm's way, demand for gasoline has jumped incredibly, said Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy.com.
"These numbers will continue to rise very fast," De Haan said. Milton's path over Tampa Bay is spelling trouble for major fuel distribution networks, he added.
Florida is the third-largest gasoline consumer in the United States, but there are no refineries in the state, making it dependent on waterborne imports. More than 17 million tons of petroleum- and natural gas-related products move through the Tampa Bay in a typical year, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Tampa and most other Florida ports were closed on Tuesday to all vessel traffic, reports by the U.S. Coast Guard showed.
TERMINALS SHUT
Kinder Morgan (NYSE:KMI) has shut its Central Florida Pipeline system, which moves refined products between Tampa and Orlando, the company said in an emailed statement. It has closed all fuel delivery terminals in Tampa, but expects trucks to be able to pick up fuel from Orlando wholesale racks until winds exceed 35 miles per hour.
Fuel trucks cannot safely deliver at wind speeds exceeding that threshold, wholesale distributor Mansfield explained. It expects these conditions to bring all Florida fuel deliveries to a near-halt by Wednesday.
CITGO Petroleum is also shutting down its Tampa terminal, the company told Reuters.
Mansfield has moved all Florida markets to its "Code Red" classification, requiring a 72-hour notice to make new deliveries.
It is also requesting 48-hour notices for new deliveries in southern Georgia.
Milton could potentially be the biggest disruptor to Florida's gasoline supply since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, said Tom Kloza, head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service.
"I'd be hard pressed to come up with an area that could be more prone to lingering problems should a Cat3 or greater storm hit the infrastructure," Kloza said. "It's hard to anticipate any tankers or barges coming in to Tampa Bay until Sunday or Monday," he added.