BP on Statesville Rd was pumping regular unleaded for $2.89

May 19. Gasoline supplies are getting back to normal, with no lines at local pumps, although some stations do not have premium. The next four or five days look good, according to oil and gas supplies expert Tom Kloza.

However, the co-founder of Oil Price Information Service said we may not be out of the woods yet.

Memorial Day?

“We will get a reprieve in terms of station outages in the next six days or so, but I fear that crowd behavior will be ridden with madness next Tuesday though Thursday,” he said. That’s when he predicts people will mob the pumps once again in advance of the Memorial Day weekend.

He said national retailers saw sales “lifted by 15-25 percent some 3,000 miles” from the Colonial Pipeline.

It makes no sense, except through the prism of hoarding and panic buying. Think what happens to bread the day before a dusting of snow in Charlotte.

“If everyone felt the need to fill up vehicles, one could see more than 4 billion gallons of demand per day. Most driving season days typically see about 400 million gallons/day of consumption,” Kloza said.