Shell and Texaco Extend Gas Rationing

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Wednesday July 5, 2000; 10:46 PM EDT

Shell and Texaco Extend Gas Rationing Through End of July

A major American oil refiner and distributor has announced it will continue to limit gasoline to wholesalers through the end of July, contradicting earlier reports that the rationing was implemented to deal only with the high-demand July Fourth holiday weekend.

In a statement obtained by NewsMax.com on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Equilon Enterprises LLC announced:

"In order to ensure that gasoline supplies will be available for all our branded West Coast customers, Equilon is limiting the gasoline volume it is selling to its wholesale distributors to 120 percent of their May 2000 purchases for the month of July 2000."

Equilon, a joint venture formed in 1998 by Texaco and Shell Oil, serves 9,400 service stations in 31 Western and Midwestern states, amounting to 4.5 percent of the U.S. gasoline market share. Its sister company Motiva Enterprises LLC, an alliance of Texaco, Shell and Saudi Aramco, serves Eastern and Gulf Coast wholesalers, making the overall enterprise the number two refining operation in the U.S.

On Sunday the Associated Press reported that Equilon and Tosco Corporation had instituted gas rationing to combat holiday weekend stockpiling. Tosco advertises itself as "the largest independent oil refining company in the United States" and markets its product under the brand names Exxon, Mobil, Circle K and 76.

Tosco will limit its customers to 10 percent more product than they purchased at this time last year, said the AP. It's not clear how long Tosco's rationing program would remain in place. Equilon's limits would allow a 20 percent increase over last year's pump volume.

The new rationing has sparked fears that the U.S. may be in for the same kind of gas shortages that had motorists lining up for hours in 1980 to fill their tanks. Memories of uncomfortably long waits and odd-even-day rationing contributed to President Jimmy Carter's re-election defeat that fall.

But Equilon spokeswoman Myra Jolivet says such fears are unfounded. "This volume control measure is expected to make available gasoline supplies sufficient to meet all our wholesalers' normal projected demand for July 2000."

Saudi Arabia vowed on Wednesday to boost oil production by 500,000 barrels a day, but experts say any impact may not be felt in the U.S. till early fall.

http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2000/7/5/214907

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 06, 2000

Answers

That's always the way it works: first rationing is just going to be for a few days, then it's extended to a few weeks, then a few months.

Al Gore still leads Bush in the polls in California. I wonder how much longer this will prevail, if, as expected, California takes the brunt of high gasoline prices and shortages?

-- Uncle Fred (dogboy45@bigfoot.com), July 06, 2000.


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