Blue Star Chronicles

The gas shortage in Georgia is starting to hit home. I drove into Atlanta today and there was no avoiding the outrage over the outages of gasoline. There’s none to be found anywhere.

Gas in Georgia?

I traveled into a suburb of Atlanta today and was struck by the number of closed gas stations and long lines at the stations that were open. Of course, I had heard of the gas shortage and seen some signs of it in my own suburb, but I have a full tank of gas and just hadn’t noticed obvious signs of the shortage. Today there wasn’t any not noticing it. And interestingly, when I got back to my own neighborhood, I noticed that most of the stations were closed here as well. It seemed like it happened over night.

The gas shortage is so serious that there was talk of Alabama and Georgia not meeting Between the Hedges for today’s college football game. Around here, that’s dead on alarmingly serious.

The problem is a result of the recent Hurricane Gustav followed shortly by Hurricane Ike. The double whammy on the oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico have left them either producing at far below their capacity and certainly not enough to supply the needs of the country.

The ripple effect is obvious. Vacations are canceled, anything other than absolutely necessary driving is curtailed, college football could be postponed or canceled. That might sound like frivolous pursuits. But as each activity declines and falls off completely, the economy suffers. Businesses face hardships as their sources of revenue are declining or cut off completely. People are laid off when businesses lose money. Its a slippery slope, indeed.

Georgia’s Governor Sonny Purdue says that the whole situation has been blown out of proportion. Of course, I’m not sure when the last time was he had to stop and fill up his own tank. Just from my observation, its not looking good out there.

Today I saw the closed stations and the long lines of vehicles that poured out into the busy roadways, waiting for their turn to get what gas there was to get at any given station that was still opened. It reminded me of the 1970s when Jimmy Carter was President. We had to wait in line for gas then and the gas prices were sky high.

We’ll see what happens when people have to go to work on Monday. I know I’m not driving anywhere I don’t have to.

It does drive home how tied into oil and gas we are as a society. When I see how Russia is working so hard to corner the market on the gas and oil pipelines that supply Western Europe, I realize how fragile our way of life really is. We take a lot for granted and don’t give any of it a lot of thought until its not there any longer.