I never thought I would live to see the day I would be waiting for over 20 minutes to get gas. Atlanta and the southwest were hit hard by the gas shortages caused by the oil refinery shutdown caused from hurican Ike, leading to weeks of empty pumps and long lines at stations that had gas. But, that has finally loosened up a little and things here in Atlanta are starting to return to normal.

I remember the weekend that Ike hit Texas. My tank was 1/4 full and I did not think to fill up on Friday. It was a Sunday and I had heard that gas was growing scarce. I work 40 miles from my home and became a little worried about having gas the next day to get to work. I drove out to get gas and was amazed to find almost every gas station empty, pumps covered with no gas. Eventually I found one place that had gas, but I had to wait to get it.

Little did I know that this trend would continue for weeks. Every gas station would run out of fuel as fast as it was supplied. I started to top off whenever I could find gas. Lines would run out into the major road the gas station was on and wait times would sometimes take as long as an hour. Tempers would run close to the boiling point and fights would threaten to break out. People even started to follow tankers to find which gas stations had gas.

1970’s Gas Crisis
1974 Gas Lines


Present Day Gas Crisis
Present Day Gas Lines


Thankfully, that supply has eased up a little and at least low grade gas is available again. The whole situation struck me as oddly serene. Growing up, I had heard stories and read about the gas shortages in the early 1970’s, but I never thought I would live to see a similar event myself. Of course the motivations behind the 1970’s shortage was differernt than the current shortage. The 1073 shortage was caused due to numerous economic factors caused by OPEC, where the current oil crisis was purely the byproduct of mother nature intervening and shutting refineries down in Texas. The problem stems from the fact that the South East gets their gas from primarily Colonial pipeline which was directly affected by huricane Ike.

Pipeline System Map
pipeline1.gif

It is amazing how this storm/huricane, Ike, in Texas could shut down refineries that would affect people drastically at quite a geographic distance. It really shows how interconnected things are across space. Oil could not be refined and roughly 800 miles away we felt the effects in Atlanta and the southeastern United States! Only in the last week have things started to return to normal in Atlanta, almost a month later…