Gas shortages caused by Hurricane Milton will take days to address, experts say

(TAMPA, Fla.) — Hurricane Milton left widespread gasoline shortages across Florida after it made landfall on Wednesday night and cut across the state. The damage exacerbated fuel outages that began before the storm arrived, as millions fled from its path.

Nearly a quarter of the roughly 7,900 gas stations in the state have run dry, petroleum data firm GasBuddy reported Thursday. Oil Price Information Service, or OPIS, another company that tracks the sector, found as much as half of the state’s gas stations lack fuel, Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at OPIS, told ABC News.

Across Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg, almost two thirds of gas stations are without fuel, according to GasBuddy.

Experts said they expect the gas shortages to persist for days, hamstringing businesses and everyday people as Florida begins to recover from Hurricane Milton.

The delayed return of gasoline in the region owes to disruption at Port Tampa Bay, which says it handles more than 43% of the state’s petroleum imports. Far-reaching power outages will also impede gas service, since gas stations depend on power to pump fuel from storage tanks and deliver it into vehicles, experts said.

“This kind of situation isn’t solved overnight,” Jon Davis, chief meteorologist at Everstream Analytics, told ABC News. “It’s going to take many days to work itself out and get the situation back to normal.”

Port Tampa Bay, which remains closed, appears to have averted serious damage from the storm, the port said in a statement on Thursday morning. However, the port also noted that it continues to face road closures and flood concerns in the surrounding area.

“Some damage was observed to buildings but there has been no significant damage to docks, so far,” said the statement. “We are working with our fuel terminal operators to assess their facilities and learn when they will be able to return to service.”

Port Tampa Bay did not respond to an ABC News request for comment about the extent of damage from the storm.

While the port escaped a disaster that could have hampered fuel supplies in the state for weeks, the ongoing disruption still poses significant challenges for gas delivery in the short term, Jason Miller, a professor of supply-chain management at Michigan State University, told ABC News.

“It does seem we’ve avoided a worst-case scenario,” Miller said.

Depending on the extent of damage at the port, gas stations may come to rely on truck deliveries for the transport of fuel, Miller said. In that case, it would take some time to build up the capacity necessary to overcome the state’s gas outages, he added.

“It’s not a solution that you could implement tomorrow,” Miller said.

The potential return of port operations or the supplemental fuel from trucks would both rely on the state’s roads, some of which were damaged by the storm, experts noted. Such infrastructure may require repairs before gasoline carriers can safely deliver fuel to stations.

“The road issue can get taken care of in the next day or two,” Davis said.

Even if Port Tampa Bay comes back online and trucks join in to aid the recovery, a significant additional problem must first be addressed: power shortages. Gas stations require power to pump fuel from storage tanks into customers’ vehicles, and more than 3.4 million customers are currently without power in Florida, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.

Port Tampa Bay said on Thursday that it remains without power, which it needs to operate oil terminals that make up a critical step in the supply chain.

More than 50,000 linemen have been pre-staged across Florida to restore power, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday.

“In a perfect world, power comes back quickly,” OPIS’ Cinquegrana said. “I think by early next week we might still see some stations out but for the most part you’ll get pretty close to normal.”