Gasoline extended its longest rally since 2013 as traders assess how quickly key Gulf Coast refineries and pipelines are able to return to service following Harvey.

Motor-fuel prices jumped as much as 15 percent in New York. Harvey has shuttered about 23 percent of U.S. refining capacity since its first landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Friday. While refineries in the Port Arthur, Beaumont and Houston areas remain off line, some plants in the Corpus Christi area -- where Harvey first hit -- are working to restart and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on Thursday approved the release of 1 million barrels of crude to a Gulf Coast refinery.

Colonial said its Lines 1 and 2 are operating east of Lake Charles and it will be able to bypass any shuttered terminals near Port Arthur, Texas when it resumes shipments Sunday from Houston-area origin points.

The focus is on how long refineries will take to get back online, according to Tariq Zahir, a New York-based commodity fund manager at Tyche Capital Advisors LLC, in a telephone interview. “This is more of an unleaded gasoline story. The impact on the whole Texas area--the story is still developing.”

Eoin Treacy's view

Today was the last day of trading for the September gasoline contract. Anyone who needed to take delivery and waited till the last minute was forced to pay whatever the market offered today and the contract surged higher. However, with southwest Texas refineries already starting back up and Harvey being downgraded to a tropical storm, the October contract does not have quite the same time pressure as the September. 

Short-term supply disruptions can have outsized impacts on pricing but because time value of money changes with the contract roll it can represent a turning point for short-term trends. The uptick in GDP growth figures should represent a medium-term tailwind and offer support during a pullback but a lot of supply concerns have already been priced in suggesting there is now scope for a pullback and consolidation.