Some of us non-driving New Yorkers may have forgotten about the Great Post-Sandy Gas Crisis of 2012, but in the weeks following the hurricane, the gas shortage was real, resulting in rationing, super-long car lines and the occasional sex-for-gas Craigslist ad. Now, to prevent the Northeast from descending into any future gas crises, the federal government says they'll be setting up the country's first gas reserves, located in the New York Harbor and in New England.
The government says the reserves are a direct response to the post-Sandy shortage which, while eventually resolved, made it even more difficult for families forced to forgo electricity, running water and public transportation in the wake of the storm. "I remember those horrible days after Sandy, when people couldn’t get gasoline,” NY Senator Chuck Schumer told the Times. “It was pouring salt in the wound. People needed food, heat; they needed the barest necessities. But the public transportation was knocked out. If you didn’t have gasoline for a car, you were shorn from the basic necessities. It prolonged the pain of Sandy for almost a month.”
The U.S. has a national reserve near the Gulf of Mexico, harboring about 700 million barrels of crude oil in salt domes. The two new reserves, which will cost about $215 million, will hold about a million barrels of gasoline. They will only be used in gas shortage emergencies—emergencies we can probably assume will happen again, and again, and again, until the city finally joins Atlantis somewhere at the bottom of the sea.
