Its very tiresome to hear the usual voices chanting "liberals, liberals"... This cause of the problem should be obvious, but just in case its not.

What's causing gas shortages in the Northeast?


(MoneyWatch) While the price of gas is dropping across the nation, acute shortages across storm-ravaged sections of New York and New Jersey have pushed the cost up in those areas. With abundant fuel supplies elsewhere, frustrated New York and New Jersey residents wonder why they are waiting in gas lines for hours, and how long is the shortage is going to last.

The reasons for the shortage are many -- gas stations with no power, flooded tanks, an inability of fuel trucks to reach stations, and of course the panic-induced run on supplies.


Aside from some scattered reports of gouging, the price of a gallon of gas in the New York metropolitan area is up by 3 cents to 7 cents. In the rest of the nation the price has dropped 7 cents in just the last week.

The price increase is due almost entirely to the number of retail outlets shutdown by superstorm Sandy.


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Electricity, gas problems persist one week after Sandy


Even though the U.S. Energy Department reports 73 percent of gas stations in the New York metropolitan area had gasoline Sunday -- up from 62 percent on Nov. 3, that doesn't mean that they are all operational. The New Jersey Gasoline, Convenience, Automotive Association estimates that at least 75 percent of the state's gas stations were closed either because they had no gasoline, no power or both. You can go online to find stations that have gas -- for instance Hess lists all its stations and how much gas they have available

"There is a choke in the supply chain and the choke isn't in the amount of fuel that's in the region," says David Zahn, vice president of marketing for FuelQuest, which makes supply chain management software for the fuel industry. "It's the retail station -- if you don't have electricity you can't pump fuel."

Even stations with electricity are having difficulty staying supplied with gas because of damaged roads and difficulties coordinating deliveries from suppliers. Millions of gallons of gasoline are sitting in storage tanks, pipelines and tankers that can't unload their cargoes.


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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_1...the-northeast/