The gas is flowing again after the Coast Guard shut down Port Tampa Bay for safety reasons last Monday ahead of Hurricane Milton.
Overseas Shipholding Group CEO Sam Norton said his company and other maritime carriers will be delivering more than 100 million gallons of fuel to ports in Florida in the next week or so.
“700,000 barrels a day is the capacity and is the average consumption of fuel in Florida. So, you can imagine, that's a lot of fuel that has to move into these ports when a storm arises, as did twice in the last couple of weeks," Norton said. "That regular pattern of supply is disrupted.”
And the thing about Florida, Norton said, is the state is so dependent on the ports for fuel.
“Most other states receive substantial portions of their liquid fuels via pipelines. And there are natural gas pipelines that serve the power industry, but there's no pipeline that brings diesel, jet, gasoline into the state of Florida,” Norton said.
The fuel comes in via three main ports in the state: Port Tampa Bay, Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale and Jaxport.
He said Hurricane Helene brought so much water into the bay and left debris behind in the water, forcing a channel survey to make sure it was safe to travel on the water after the storm. That took several days.
With Milton, he said it knocked out some navigation buoys.
OSG is using conventional medium-range tankers and Articulated Tug Barges — or ATBs — to get the fuel to the state.
They can carry 325,000 barrels and 200,000 barrels, or 8.4 million gallons, respectively.
Norton said so many people count on fuel and assume its an easy thing to get it to Floridians. But it’s not. He likens it to the many pre-checks airline pilots do to get a flight into motion. Miss one thing and it could trigger disaster.
“There are a lot of people involved that take risk, personal risk, in order to make that happen," Norton said. "And we should be better at appreciating that, in my opinion, as a community, the same way we appreciate firemen and policemen and others.”
He said “ships break apart and catch fire” and traveling the seas can be treacherous. But his group aims for zero incidents at work.
Norton said his employees have also steered off course in the past to answer distress calls and have rescued others whose sailboats or motorboats have gone down.
