Fuel shortages are sweeping gas stations across Louisiana following Hurricane Ida

Three days after Hurricane Ida knocked out power throughout New Orleans, residents wait in long lines at a neighborhood gas station to fill fuel containers for cash-only sales.

REUTERS/Steve Nesius

• 13% of gas stations across Louisiana have no fuel after Hurricane Ida, data from GasBuddy showed.
• Baton Rouge was the worst affected city, with over 51% of stations without gasoline on Tuesday.
• Hurricane Ida hit the Gulf Coast Sunday and left one person dead and 1 million people without power.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

Hurricane Ida has left many gas stations in Louisiana without any fuel, CNN first reported on Tuesday.

More than one in 10 (13%) of gas stations across the state were out of fuel as of Tuesday, according to data from GasBuddy, a tech company that tracks real-time fuel prices.

Hurricane Ida struck the Gulf Coast on Sunday, leaving at least one person dead and more than 1 million people in the area without power.

The two Louisiana cities hardest hit by the outages were Baton Rouge and New Orleans. More than half of the gas stations in Baton Rouge (51.4%) and nearly 47% of stations in New Orleans were without gasoline as of 8 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday, per GasBuddy data.

Almost 10% of stations in Lafayette at 8 p.m. CT on Tuesday had no gas left, according to this chart from GasBuddy.

-Patrick De Haan ⛽️📊 (@GasBuddyGuy) September 1, 2021

These figures exclude gas stations which are closed due to power outages following the Category 4 hurricane, GasBuddy Head of Petroleum Analysis Patrick De Haan told CNN. The total number of inoperable gas stations in Louisiana is therefore much higher, De Haan said. The number of of outages reported by GasBuddy could also rise even further owing to the company fixing an earlier bug that had temporarily stopped asking users to enter updates into the app, De Haan added.

"This is a long duration event, if you don't need fuel urgently, delay purchases for those who are critical and first responders," De Haan told CNN.

Around 95% of oil production and 94% of natural gas production facilities in the US Gulf of Mexico were shut-in on Monday after Hurricane Ida hit the area, according to estimates from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, cited in a report published by the US Department of Energy. The report also said that nine oil refineries in Louisiana had shut operations.

US oil and gas companies cut more than 1.6 million barrels of oil production in preparation for Hurricane Ida, surpassing the cutbacks related to Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago, Reuters reported on Friday.

Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron said they have evacuated oil crews from offshore drilling platforms, Insider's Francis Agustin reported Saturday.

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