Local gas station employees in Walker County were reluctant Friday morning to talk about the gas situation, for fear of reprisals from their station owners. None agreed to give their names.

One gas station clerk on U.S. 27 in LaFayette said the station raised it price for regular unleaded from $3.51 Thursday afternoon to $3.66 early Friday morning. (All subsequent prices in this article are for unleaded regular.)

The price will go up again Friday afternoon, the clerk predicted, in part because of com-petition next door. She said the station’s last fuel shipment arrived Thursday. A 10-gallon limit per customer was being imposed at the station.

Another clerk at a gas station on U.S. 27 said her station was one of the few that still had plenty of fuel. The clerk predicted the price would again increase at her station, from $3.58, within the next few hours due to the decrease in supply and because the station was not expecting another shipment to arrive Friday.

At the station one customer, who asked not to be identified, expressed anger and frustra-tion at the situation. “Here we suffer and fear, as the oil companies collect,” he said.

The clerk at another gas station on U.S. 27 said the station did not expect another ship-ment from Knoxville anytime soon. Its prices rose from $3.51 on Thursday to $3.66 Friday morning, she said.

The clerk said the station was close to running out until a shipment arrives. The station had been extremely busy since around 5 p.m. Thursday, she said.

The clerk predicted there would be more than one price increase coming at her station. She said customers were being limited to 10 gallons and that the station’s price would de-pend in part on the next-door gas station’s price.

Another station on U.S. 27 had a voluntary 10-gallon limit, in which it was requesting cus-tomers to only pump 10 gallons, but was not enforcing the limit. The station’s price had risen from $3.50 on Thursday to $3.65 Friday morning.

The clerk at another station on U.S. 27 said the station had raised its gas price twice since Thursday night. The price was $3.49 as of Thursday evening and had settled to $3.81 as of late Friday morning.

Customer’s frustrations are evident. One gas station clerk said she saw an altercation Thursday evening between two customers that grew violent and police were called to the scene to settle the dispute.

Similar gas woes in Catoosa

Meanwhile, in Catoosa County, at least one local fuel station in Ringgold is asking customers to limit the amount of gasoline they purchase.

The Kangaroo Express at 5337 Alabama Highway had signs at each of its pumps as of Friday morning, when regular unleaded was $3.61 a gallon, requesting people buy no more than 10 gallons at a time “due to limited gasoline supply.”

“This request will allow us to provide gasoline for all of our valued customers during the time of limited supply in the Southeastern U.S.,” the signs read.

Managers at the BP station said they posted the signs Thursday afternoon, but otherwise declined comment and referred questions to their corporate office. A woman who answered the phone there said all the staff was in a meeting and not immediately available for comment.

Fuel prices have escalated sharply since news that Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 storm in the Gulf of Mexico, would likely hit Friday night or Saturday morning. According to weather.com, the storm was expected to make landfall in Texas and Louisiana where several petroleum refineries along the coast have already shut down in anticipation of the storm.

Though Ike has yet to make landfall, Walker and Catoosa counties are already feeling the impact of a potential fuel shortage as motorists come in droves to fill their tanks.

In at least one case in Catoosa, the high demand temporarily put an owner out of business selling regular unleaded. At Cochran’s Travel Center at 11343 Highway 41, owner Jewel Cochran said he ran out of gasoline at 8:30 a.m. Friday. He has smaller holding tanks than some of the larger stations, he said, and doesn’t plan to buy more gasoline until Ike passes.

“All I’ve got is premium,” he said, which he said was selling for $3.67 a gallon as of about 10 a.m. that morning.

Cochran said that while he has plenty of diesel, he’ll wait until after the storm before he buys more gas. His wholesale prices went up by $1.80 on Thursday and by another 97 cents on Friday, he said.

“I’m just going to let it go,” he said. “It’s all I can do.”

According to a Sept. 11 statement from the U.S. Minerals Management Service, personnel from 93 of the 121 oil rigs operating near the Gulf have been evacuated. The Washington Times reports that about 25 percent of domestic oil production and 15 percent of natural gas output comes from the Gulf.

Several fuel stations in Chattanooga, Tenn. were running out of gas on Thursday and Friday after being flooded with motorists wanting to buy their fuel before prices went up more.