Monday, September 15, 2008

Fear, Panic & Gasoline: Hurricane Ike and the Media

OK, OK, this was published before I knew pipelines were broken and Ike screwed things up. People still freaked out. Oh well, read this as if it were fiction with some mix of truth. At least it's fun. Enjoy folks. Try to limit your driving.




It's the afternoon of Friday September 12th, 2008 and Hurricane Ike is bearing down on the Texas coastline. In its path: many of America's precious oil refineries. The news has been covering Ike for what seems like weeks as it trekked across the Atlantic, into the Caribbean, and onto the Gulf of Mexico. Much like when Hurricane Katrina threatened oil refineries and offshore oil rigs in 2005, Ike seemed poised to cause similar problems. All of the sudden, the news claims there may end up being a shortage of gasoline due to the impending doom of Ike. Panic ensued.

With supply seeming to be cut drastically, prices began to rise. With the threat of a shortage of gas, demand skyrocketed. I sat by idly watching terror set in. I had 3/4 of a tank, I'd be fine. I turned on the news on Friday afternoon to see prices rising and something I'd never seen before, stations running out of gas completely. I raised an eyebrow. 

"Maybe this is worse than I thought," I wondered. 

No, no, all a media sham. Around 5:30PM I left my house to take my brother to work to find traffic out into the streets with people attempting to fill up. Some stations had prices up 50-80 cents higher than they were just hours before and the less expensive stations looked more like the oil embargo of the 70s than in 2008. I thought this would pass. I then passed a series of stations, they had run out of gas. Caution tape created a perimeter around the pumps and prices had been taken down from the signs. The apocalypse set in. 

"This is what it's going to be like when gas truly runs out," I thought. "We're screwed."

I thought this would all pass and by Saturday morning things would return to normal, but upon seeing my first gas station that had gas around 8:30AM on Saturday, the line again was into the street. I wondered if these were the same people panicking yesterday and still waiting for a few precious gallons. More stations closed, the few remaining had raised prices anywhere from 60 cents to a whole dollar more per gallon. The media succeeded, they created mass hysteria.

Hurricane Ike brought destruction to the Texas coast, pounding Galveston and Houston leaving a swath of damage and by Saturday afternoon it had left its mark. As the news poured in about the damage in Texas, no one was sure about those crucial refineries. Once word came in, I laughed, no major damage reported, and gas would begin flowing without much in the way of continued problems. 

I didn't fill up. I was fine, at the time of this writing I am still on that same tank of gas, with just under a half a tank left. Gas, while more expensive than a week ago, is now flowing at most of the local gas stations and I'll fill up upon needed it. 

What is to be learned from this? We panic quickly and usually do not think things through when disaster is looming. The media quickly spreads information about a gas shortage and people lose it, promptly begin wasting gas by getting in their cars, drive to the nearest gas station and either sit in their cars burning fuel waiting to purchase more, or they drive around wasting even more fuel looking for a cheaper station or one that actually still has gas. As a society, we need to learn when it is appropriate to heed warnings from the media and when to use their messages to plan out accordingly. Rather than freaking out, I sat back and analyzed the situation, understood that it may or may not happen and conserve fuel rather than go hunting for more. Cut down on trips and the gas I have will get me places until the tankers show up much to everyone's delight. 

Oil has continued to drop, meaning the price increase from Hurricane Ike will probably fade quickly and drop below pre-Ike prices and then I'll fill up, knowing that I didn't let the media's panic and fear inducing reports get to me and hopefully save a few bucks than those who decided going to BP at 8AM on a Saturday was a great idea. 


5 comments:

The Most trusted name in fake News said...

The price of gas from that hurricane went up 2.00 in just 4 hours!!!!!

At my cousins house in N. Carolina he says the price is around 7.00$ a gallon!!!!!

Leonard Pagano III said...

Natural disasters will do this sometimes. This really shows a bad preparation by the "oil people" for when these things happen because these things have been happening. Maybe we need more refining capacity than the exact amount of demand? Maybe?

I do like how oil has come down and the Saudis convinced OPEC to increase production. Just as we put a little political pressure for investing in alternatives. If this is all it took we should have threatened to do this a long time ago. I mean honestly. We shouldn't stop, I'm just saying.

Schmidt said...

I forgot where I heard it from, but rumor has it that two radio stations were pushing the idea that gas was going to skyrocket and be in a shortage (before it happened), which caused people to panic as you noted. I scolded a couple of my friends who took the bait to go get gas and persuaded my parents to wait it out. Gas will be 3.40 when this blows over.

Adam Strotman said...

To be fair I think that had the media not covered this, there would have still been panic and shortages, it just would have taken longer to spread. The media just added gasoline to the fire which made people panic much faster than they would have if they saw the price going up by 10-15 cents and the news spread by word of mouth.

AS for the Saudis increasing production and saying no to OPEC, I think that comes more from the recent drop in the U.S.'s demand of oil and miles driven then from political pressure. Don't get me wrong, the pressure is still there but the Saudis are more motivated to up production because they'd rather see oil at 2-3 dollars a gallon and make a little less money than having us off oil altogether because of 4+ dollar a gallon gasoline.

Joel Mendelson said...

Gas stations near my house are still running out of gas... A week later? C'mon. Insanity folks. I had to go to multiple stations to fill up a gas tank for a lawn mower today. Hmmm, perhaps the guy that pulled out of Shell in an H1 Hummer might want to rethink his purchase.