About one-fourth of the state’s gas stations are out of fuel, and the number is expected to rise.
Gas shortages have already begun in Florida as Hurricane Milton approaches the state generating up to 145 mph winds.
By Wednesday at 2:43 p.m., more than 24 percent of Florida’s 7,915 gas stations are out of fuel, according to fuel-tracker
data provided by GasBuddy. That’s about 1,900 stations.
The National Hurricane Center said the Category 4 hurricane is “growing in size as it moves closer to the west coast of Florida,” delivering “life-threatening storm surge, damaging winds, and flooding rains” to be expected throughout the state. The hurricane was downgraded from a Category 5 on Tuesday.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a
press conference on Wednesday that the state has “considerable fuel reserves ahead of Milton,” and that they would be “utilized as needed following the storm.”
“We’ve already dispatched a lot of fuel in the lead-up to this, but we still have on hand 1.6 million gallons of diesel and 1.1 million gallons of gasoline,” he said.
As it stands, there’s no fuel shortage, he said.
“However, demand has been extraordinarily high, and some gas stations have run out,” he said. “To be able to help ameliorate that, the Florida Highway Patrol has facilitated 106 long-distance fuel tanker escorts with sirens getting through traffic totaling almost a million gallons of gasoline from ports in Tampa, Jacksonville, Everglades, and Manatee, and they are continuing with the fuel escorts as we speak.”
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said the hurricane will likely disrupt critical infrastructure such as fuel terminals and power plants.
Florida, which has no refineries or gasoline pipelines, is supplied by delivery trucks or ships from domestic and international sources, the EIA said.
The U.S. Coast Guard reported the closure of several ports in Florida, the EIA said. “Inbound and outbound vessel traffic to Port Tampa Bay, where over 17 million tons of petroleum- and natural gas-related products move through in a typical year, has ceased,” the EIA said.
More than 43 percent of the state’s petroleum moves through Port Tampa Bay, the EIA said.
“The duration of the port closures and impacts from Hurricane Milton on trade movements for petroleum and natural gas remain uncertain,” the EIA said.
DeSantis said in a Wednesday press release that Hurricane Milton is traveling 190 miles southwest of Tampa “with maximum sustained winds of 145 mph.” “Milton will move across the eastern Gulf of Mexico today, make landfall along the west-central coast of Florida late tonight or early Thursday morning, and move off the east coast of Florida over the western Atlantic Ocean Thursday afternoon,” DeSantis said.
Milton follows Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on the Florida panhandle on Sept. 26, digging a destructive path up through western North Carolina, where many residents have yet to recover.
Helene, a Category 4 hurricane, dropped 40 trillion gallons of water on multiple southeastern states from Sept. 24 to 29. Winds reached 140 mph. The death count is currently at 227, but officials expect that number to rise.
