Hurricane Harvey may cause rise in gas prices
“Obviously if a refinery is underwater it can’t do a whole lot to produce gasoline,” GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick DeHaan said. “It’s just a matter of time before they start curtailing production at those refineries.”
About one-third of the nation’s gasoline refining capacity is located in the Gulf Coast region.
Oil Price Information Service analyst Tom Kloza said it’s “not likely to be an apocalyptic or seminal event” for energy. But he noted that wholesale gasoline prices are jumping 10 cents to 20 cents per gallon at Gulf refineries, which will likely lead to nationwide increases in the retail price within the next two to four days.
Increases will likely be highest in the Gulf states and lowest in western markets and states in the nation’s heartland.
But prices will quickly recede after a temporary spike, Kloza said, as kids go back to school and heavy travel subsides.
Hurricane Katrina was the last storm to significantly undermine U.S. gasoline supplies, Kloza said.
Although rain can cause short-term outages, wind and storm surge pose the greatest risk of long-term damage, Kloza said.
But storms that cause major disruption are a “very rare bird,” he said.
Even with winds projected in the range of more than 90 mph, “it doesn’t look like wind should be too much of an issue in terms of long-term damage,” DeHaan said.
Wednesday’s shift by Verizon, the nation’s largest wireless carrier, to offer a choice of plans with “unlimited” data (both contain enough restrictions to make “unmetered” a more accurate description) adds some math and fine-print perusal to your service shopping.
In place of the $80 offering Verizon introduced in February, the carrier now leads off its unmetered data choices with a $75 “Go Unlimited” deal ($130 for two lines, $150 for three and $160 for four) that demands significant compromises. Think of this as the equivalent of “Basic Economy” airfares that unbundle many traditional features of air travel.
Unlimited” caps the resolution of streaming video at 480p, the same quality as a DVD. On a tablet, you get 720p, the minimum resolution for high-definition TV. That’s well below the capabilities of screens on either type of device.
you share with nearby devices via Wi-Fi — called mobile hotspot use or tethering — is cut all the way back to 600 kbps, even worse than the typically wretched WiFi at tech trade shows such as CES.
will see your speed “deprioritized” if your phone connects to a tower experiencing congestion, even if you haven’t used up any data yourself in the current billing cycle.
A new $85 per month “Beyond Unlimited” plan — $160 for two lines, $180 for three lines and $200 for four — ups the streaming-video resolution limit to 720p on phones and 1080p, or “full HD,” on tablets and offers 15 gigabytes of fullspeed hot spot use a month.
It also doesn’t risk deprioritization until you’ve used up 22