UP UP UP

Gas Prices Expected to Surge Because of Harvey

Nearly 15% of the nation’s refinery capacity has been knocked out.

Nearly 15 percent of the U.S.’s oil-refinery capacity has been knocked out by flooding from Hurricane Harvey, raising gasoline futures prices. “It’s obviously going to be a lot worse than what we were telling people on Friday,” Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com, told The Dallas Morning News. DeHaan said there’s a “huge danger that the numbers could change in a moment’s notice,” with gas prices expected to jump by 15 to 25 cents along the Gulf Coast and 5 to 15 cents outside the region. Refineries owned by Petrobras, Phillips 66, Exxon Mobil, and Shell were all shut down Sunday because of the flooding. The effects may be felt on the national economy, as Harvey’s destruction is the first large-scale disaster in an energy-production region since the U.S. resumed exporting oil.