Helene and Milton Showed Florida's Fuel System Is a Port System. Prices Held, Pumps Ran Dry

Within two weeks, Florida was struck by two major hurricanes. Helene made landfall on the eastern Florida Panhandle on September 26 as a Category 4 storm and caused major power outages and infrastructure damage along a path from Florida to the Appalachian Mountains. Milton came ashore on the west coast on October 9 as a Category 3. Three other named storms, Beryl, Debby and Francine, had already made landfall in the United States during the season as Category 1 or 2 hurricanes.

The electricity damage from Helene, especially in western North Carolina, has dominated coverage. Florida has no oil refineries and no major product pipelines from the Gulf Coast refining centers. Almost all of its gasoline, diesel and jet fuel arrives by tanker and barge, then moves by truck from coastal terminals to stations and airports. Before Helene, the Coast Guard closed several Gulf Coast ports and halted traffic into Tampa Bay. The average retail price of regular gasoline in Florida was unchanged on October 14 compared with October 7.

Wholesale markets were well supplied, so the storms did not create a regional shortage of product in the Gulf Coast refining system that serves Florida. The EIA notes that price spikes at individual stations do occur, and they feed into statewide averages, but in this case they were not enough to move the state figure. The emergency response helped: on October 15, the governor's office reported that the Florida Division of Emergency Management had deployed 508,600 gallons of diesel and 686,200 gallons of gasoline to address shortages.

What Florida experienced after Milton was a distribution shortage, not a supply shortage. Helene's electricity damage, especially in the southern Appalachians, illustrates the other side of the problem. The 2024 season will be counted as an expensive one, with five landfalling hurricanes and two major storms hitting Florida in quick succession. A state that imports all of its fuel by sea will always be vulnerable to storms that close its ports.