Harvey refinery disruptions: Gasoline prices will march up nationally, Andy Lipow says
With flooding from Harvey causing refinery disruptions in southeastern Texas, oil supply could be impacted as far away as the Mid-Atlantic.
“Right now about 31% of the refining industry has been affected and if the refineries aren’t running, we don’t have the products to put in the pipeline,” Lipow Oil Associates President Andy Lipow told the FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto on Cavuto Coast to Coast.
Lipow says gasoline futures will continue to rise over the next few days as the markets assess what is going on, but there is a lag in the impact on the retail market.
“The retail side has not absorbed all these increases that we’ve seen in the pipeline barrels that we trade, which have already spiked 20 to 30 cents a gallon.”
Lipow predicts rising prices at the pump for consumers, telling Cavuto, “I expect that gasoline prices are going to march up nationally about three cents a gallon per day over the next five to seven days.”
According to Lipow, along with impacting drivers across the country, it will also affect the airline industry as well.
“We’ve talked a lot about gasoline, but if the refineries are not making jet fuel and you’re thinking about, ‘ow does Atlanta get its jet fuel?’ It’s coming from the Gulf Coast. So there’s going to be an issue happening in a variety of airports as this outage extends.”