This is hard to believe, every station I saw last week was very busy and many had lines.
U.S. Gasoline Use Fell 4% Last Week
By JEFFREY BALL and RUSSELL GOLD
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 9, 2005; Page A13
Americans used 4% less gasoline amid skyrocketing pump prices last week than they did the week before Hurricane Katrina hit, the federal government reported. But whether that indicates consumers have decided to conserve or merely that they couldn't find all the gasoline they wanted isn't clear.
The figures came amid signs that Katrina's effect on the nation's energy markets will continue to be felt in the weeks and months to come. The Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration said yesterday that stores of gasoline last week fell below the average range for the period, in a time when refineries are running flat-out to meet demand, after the hurricane knocked out Gulf Coast refineries. Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard said yesterday that 52 energy-production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were missing and 58 were damaged by the hurricane, nearly double the report of missing or damaged platforms Tuesday.
Following weeks in which U.S. gasoline use stood at more than 9.4 million barrels a day, it fell to about nine million barrels in the week ended last Friday, the EIA reported. Use fell by a similar amount compared with the year-earlier period. However, EIA officials cautioned that one week doesn't make a long-term trend.
The figures didn't include data from the Labor Day weekend or from this week. It's also unclear whether the weather simply reduced driving in the affected states, though government analysts doubted that explained the full drop. Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with the Oil Price Information Service, a Wall, N.J., industry-research firm, said fuel retailers he has talked to have reported a particularly large drop-off in demand since Saturday. "It dropped off the table," he said -- a shift that, if true, wouldn't be reflected until the next government report, due out next week.
Yesterday's EIA numbers were the second indication in as many days that Americans might be tempering their consumptive ways in response to sharply higher gasoline prices. On Wednesday, the EIA slashed its prediction for U.S. oil-demand growth for the full year, "largely due to higher prices."
Meanwhile, the federal Minerals Management Service reported that 49.6% of combined oil and natural-gas production in the Gulf was still offline yesterday, slightly more than the 49.4% that was shut down on Tuesday. In the days after the hurricane, offshore operators were able to put workers back on numerous platforms and quickly restore about half of the daily output from the Gulf, which accounts for about a quarter of domestic oil and natural-gas production.
But since Tuesday, virtually no additional production has been brought back online. "We've restored the low-hanging fruit and I suspect there will be diminishing returns from here on out," said David Dismukes, associate director of the Louisiana State University Center for Energy Studies in Baton Rouge, La.
Yesterday's bearish news on the pace of infrastructure repairs raised specific concerns about the supply of natural gas for the coming home-heating season. Crews are canvassing the Gulf to determine which pipelines, hub facilities and platforms require repairs.
October natural-gas futures yesterday rose 14.6 cents to close at $11.347 a million British thermal units. Crude-oil futures finished up 12 cents to $64.49 a barrel, up 48% year-to-date. Gasoline futures rose 1.58 cents to $2.04 a gallon.
Separately, British Airways and Singapore Airlines, two of the largest international carriers, raised fuel surcharges on most airline tickets. |
