NEW YORK (Reuters) - At two gasoline stations in Scarsdale, a wealthy suburb of New York City not far from one of the nation’s worst outbreaks of coronavirus, attendants whiled away the minutes on a rainy Friday morning at what would normally be their busiest time of day.
“We’ve had one or two customers - that’s it,” said Julio Barrios as he sat under an umbrella at the full-service Shell station in downtown Scarsdale. “For more than a week, business has been slow.”
The coronavirus has infected at least 156,000 people worldwide and killed more than 5,800, rocking the global economy.
As cases steadily grow across the United States, Americans are cancelling road trips, running fewer errands and finding they do not have to drop their children off at school following widespread closings.
The irony is that drivers are parking their cars at a time when gasoline is more affordable, which usually spurs more driving. The average price for a gallon of gasoline is $2.26 as of Saturday, lowest since 2017, according to the American Automobile Association.
The United States consumes more than 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products daily, the most worldwide, and motor gasoline accounts for nearly half of that, at about 9 million barrels a day. But the coronavirus outbreak’s effect on driving activity is expected to be drastic.
“We would estimate commuting and leisure driving will be down up to 50%, with most impact in the northern states where the virus spreads faster now,” said Per Magnus Nysveen, senior partner at Oslo, Norway-based energy research firm Rystad Energy.
