Colonial Pipeline Shut Down Due To Hurricane Harvey -- August 31, 2017

Updates

September 3, 2017: To re-open, Monday, September 4, 2017; link here.

August 31, 2017: Bloomberg -- President Trump will release 500,000 bbls of crude oil from the SPR for Phillips 66 Lake Charles refinery. 

August 31, 2017: Bloomberg update.

Motorists from Maine to Florida will soon feel the wrath of Hurricane Harvey without seeing a single raindrop. Fuel prices at the pump are likely to climb after Colonial Pipeline Co., the largest U.S. gasoline conduit, was forced shut its main diesel line late Wednesday and planned to halt its gasoline line Thursday because about half of Gulf Coast refining capacity was offline.

Valero Energy Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, both major Gulf Coast refiners, told wholesale customers Wednesday they don’t have enough gasoline and diesel to sell retail suppliers.

“It’s one thing to not have refiners,” Dan McTeague, an analyst at GasBuddy.com, a company which tracks retail prices and availability, said by phone. “It’s quite another thing to not have pipelines.”  

Hmmmm .... pipelines? I thought we didn't need any more pipelines.
 

Original Post

Link at CNN.

The Colonial has been shut down before, most recently October, 2016.

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Solution

Senator Edward Markey has the solution: link here at Reuters via Rigzone:

• release oil from the SPR 
• release gasoline from the Northeast Gasoline Reserve

Two comments:

• a shortage of oil is not the problem; the refineries are shut down
• gasoline? the US gasoline demand is about 10 million bbls/day; NEGR contains one million bbls of fuel at three sites in New York, the Boston area, and Maine

Either I'm missing something or we have another nominee for the 2017 Geico Rock Award