US East Coast petroleum marketers remain in "a tough situation" Friday, according to Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
"It looks like everyone is doing everything they can to improve supply in NJ and NY," said Gilligan in an email response to questions. "Some of the tax issues have been resolved for interstate deliveries and emergency officials are working on getting generators to gas stations without power."
"Nonetheless, it remains a very tough situation," he said.
Local New York media have shown long lines of cars at gasoline stations that have power, with reports of drivers waiting hours to fill up their tanks.
While there is no estimate of total retail outages at this time, Shell on Thursday detailed its regional outages.
As of 8:00 a.m. CDT time (1300 GMT) on Thursday, Shell said its branded network in the most heavily impacted areas was estimated as follows: 84% open in Connecticut, 47% open in New Jersey, 62% open in New York and 83% open in Pennsylvania. "For surrounding states along the East Coast, our analysis indicates that approximately 98% of our sites are open for business," the company said in an update on its website.
Lines for fuel at some Hess gasoline stations are miles long in the New York metropolitan area, the Hess CEO said Friday.
"Many of our stations have three-mile long lines," John Hess said on a third-quarter earnings call. Consumers are waiting three hours and gasoline sales are two to three times what they typically would be, Hess added. He said eight or nine stations are closed "due to flooding." A Hess spokesman later said Hess owns about 186 fuel stations in the New York City metropolitan area, which was slammed by Hurricane Sandy this week.
