Customers could fill up their vehicles’ tanks again Monday at the Shell station in south Marysville, an everyday scene that was interrupted last week when the business ran out of gasoline.
Last week and over the weekend, in fact, several Shell stations in Snohomish County ran empty. Tanks at some Texaco-branded stations also ran low because they buy from Shell as well.
"The supply was tight there for a while," said Cameron Smyth, Shell’s spokesman for the West Coast.
But he said limits on the amount of gasoline Shell provides to stations were lifted Friday, so all the stations should be running again.
Shell Oil Co. blamed problems at its Anacortes refinery for the temporary dip in fuel supplies.
Smyth said unusually cold weather two weeks ago affected equipment at the plant. Shell also reported a small fire there on Jan. 5. Normally, the facility can produce more than 140,000 barrels a day for Washington and Oregon.
The fuel shortage seemed to peak late last week. The Shell station on Marysville’s Fourth Street was out for about two days, and another station on Highway 99 in Lynnwood ran out over the weekend.
It didn’t hit equally, however. For example, the Shell station on Broadway in downtown Everett never ran out, an employee said.
Janet Ray, a spokeswoman at AAA’s regional office, said a shutdown at just one refinery can affect supplies and prices because production hasn’t kept up with increasing demand.
But the Shell refinery isn’t solely to blame for rising prices at the region’s gasoline pumps. As of Monday, the average price for regular unleaded fuel in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area was $1.65 a gallon, up three cents from Wednesday, according to AAA.
"We know things are happening out there. How much any one of them contributes to a price increase is hard to tell," Ray said.
In other parts of the nation, prices are rising even faster. Analysts are blaming tight supplies worldwide, the relatively high cost of crude oil and bone-chilling weather in the Northeast.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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