By Timothy Browning
This past week I got a glimpse into the possible future that is definitely impending, although I never thought it would arrive so soon. After Hurricane Ike decimated Galveston and other parts of Texas, gas prices spiked around the country as the oil supply shrunk due to incapacitated refineries. The Pacific Northwest saw prices begin to recede, while Charlotte and some of the South learned some hard lessons in economics, consumerism, supply and demand, and dependency.
Prices continued to rise, supplies dried up, and a significant metropolitan population scrambled to quench their thirst of a non-renewable resource that, for many people, directly affects their ability to pay their mortgage, feed their families, and the lack of which threatens their survival.
Stories abounded: People pumping gas for a half an hour for a precious three gallons. Lines hours long, pumps turning off right before or during fill-ups, drivers traveling 30 minutes or more just to find a service station with liquid gold still available.
With no definite idea of when reinforcements might come, people with and without gas were feeding a frenzy that left all but of a handful of businesses able to provide more than Coke, cigarettes and Cheetos. Some put "0.00" on their boards, some had every pump wrapped in plastic, and others simply turned dark and shut down.
I was sitting on a little more than a half a tank when I decided that I didn't want to risk it and lined up with the other sheep at my local Exxon. It was one o'clock in the morning, I was parked somewhere along the belly of the snake twisting out from the pumps, through a parking lot and onto the street about 30 cars deep, not including the identical serpent slithering from the other row of pumps. Never in my life did I think I would bring food, drink, reading materials and my iPod, prepared to wait several hours at a gas station.
Four police cars and their operators were directing traffic, regulating flow and delivering instructions. As I cruised onto Carmel Road at 2:30 a.m. with a full tank on my way home, I found it eerily strange that I felt happy to have only waited an hour and a half to maximize the fuel capacity in my Honda.
In the midst of the crisis, I began to think more in-depth of how quickly and deeply the scarcity could ultimately affect the already fragile economy and peoples' lives. The Charlotte school system had to cut down its routes, and as a result the public transportation system altered its operations because they transferred a portion of their supply to the schools. I had employees at the country club where I work who could not make it to work because they couldn't find gas and were worried about being stranded in-between.
For an uncertain minute, it seemed Charlotte was not just feeling a ripple from the waves crashing into Texas, we had our own towering wave looming, lingering and reminding us that an economic and energy implosion might not be as far away as we think.
Charlotte is supplied by two major pipelines out of the Gulf of Mexico, the Colonial and Plantation. According to the Charlotte Observer, the Colonial pipeline typically produces 95 million gallons per day and the Plantation pipeline provides an additional 20 million gallons per day. Colonial is finally up to pre-hurricane production levels, and the Plantation's capacity rose 20 percent from last week, still another 20 percent short of max capacity.
I remember my freshman year at the University of Portland in 1998, what used to be the Arco on the corner of Greeley and Portland sold gas for 97 cents a gallon. I remember $1.29 being outrageous. Two dollars hit and it seemed a bit ridiculous. Three dollars came and I just accepted the reality that it is only going to continue to rise. Now I am in a place where gas can rise nearly a dollar in two days all I care about is trying to fill my tank, regardless of cost.
It's hard to complain about the price of gasoline if you are aware of the fact that the United States still has some of the cheapest gas in the world. It's also frustrating to see people driving inefficient status symbols, more quickly depleting the world of a resource necessary for people to put food in their families' mouth and keep a roof over their heads.
More than two weeks have passed since Ike made landfall and most stations here are still without gas, the lines are still long, it's still well over $4 per gallon and the fear has been imprinted on North Carolinians.
It is disconcerting to think that the next time a hurricane hits over 1000 miles away, I might not just be paying an extra bill per gallon, I might be fighting to survive.
Timothy Browning is a graduate of the class of 2002
