Residents Line Up at Gas Pumps
By Jason Womack, Tulsa World, Okla.
Dec. 12–Power outages across the state Tuesday had slowed operations at the Cushing oil hub, shuttered a critical fuel terminal in Tulsa and curbed fuel sales at some retail gasoline outlets.
But many services were restored late that afternoon as companies installed generators and utilities returned power to some businesses.
QuikTrip, which operates 55 convenience stores in the Tulsa area, reported that some stores were experiencing spot outages of gasoline as long lines formed at the pumps on Monday and Tuesday.
But QT spokesman Mike Thornbrugh said the chain is not experiencing any fuel or food shortages.
“We are going to have stores that will run out of supply,” he said. “That is only because demand is so high.”
“It is taking a little longer to get supply to the stations.”
QuikTrip shipped diesel generators from Dallas, Kansas City and St. Louis to power several stores crippled by the winter storm.
The first of about 20 generators arrived late Monday night, allowing nearly all of the stores to resume normal operations. AEP-PSO also restored power to a pair of stores Tuesday.
Only two stores
remained without power late Tuesday afternoon. Those stores — located at 36th Street and Peoria Avenue and 21st Street and Harvard Avenue — could not sell fuel but were able to conduct cash transactions on food and other items.
Since the ice storm, QuikTrip has been closing any store that does not have power by nightfall, as a safety precaution. The stores reopen at daylight.
Kum & Go, the Iowa-based gasoline retailer, reported Monday that about a dozen of its stores were without power and unable to sell gasoline.
The ice storm that struck Tulsa on Sunday also knocked fuel storage terminals offline in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
Tulsa-based Magellan Midstream Partners LP, which operates the terminals, was unable to load fuel trucks that deliver gasoline.
However, power was returned to the Oklahoma City terminal on Monday night and Magellan, which stores and transports fuel across the Midwest, used generators Tuesday to power the Tulsa terminal.
Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co. restored power to Magellan’s Osage pipeline originating in Cushing, the delivery point for oil traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The pipeline transports 115,000 barrels of oil per day from Cushing, located about 45 miles west of Tulsa, to El Dorado, Kan.
“There is no power at the origin point, so we can’t push barrels into the line,” Bruce Heine, a Magellan spokesman said early Tuesday.
Later that afternoon, the company was ready to receive crude oil deliveries, Heine said in an e-mail.
Brian Alford, an OG&E spokesman, said the company was aware of problems at Cushing and was addressing them.
“We hope to get them squared away,” he said.
Enbridge Inc., an energy company with operations in the U.S. and Canada, had to temporarily close its Spearhead pipeline, a 125,000 barrel-per-day conduit connecting the Chicago area with Cushing.
Power losses at the hub also interrupted Enbridge’s Ozark pipeline, which connects the hub to Wood River, Ill., and a small pipeline serving the Tulsa Sinclair Refinery, company spokesman Larry Springer said.
Springer said the Spearhead resumed operations Tuesday afternoon and he expected the line to Tulsa to be operational shortly.
“We are going to get things up and moving,” he said. “It is just a little slower than normal.”
Kevin Foxx, president and CEO of Tulsa-based SemGroup Energy Partners LP, said there were some interruptions at Cushing, but everyone is working to bring power back to the hub quickly.
SemGroup Energy Partners operates 1,150 miles of pipeline in Oklahoma and Texas and 4.8 million barrels of storage at Cushing.
Portions of pipeline and deliveries had been affected by the ice storm. But the weather had already slowed many of the operations that bring fuel into the hub.
“On a day like today . . . it’s obvious that there is not a lot going on in the field,” he said.
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Jason Womack 581-8380 jason.womack@tulsaworld.com
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