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GREENSBORO, 3 p.m. — There's even less to like about Ike today.

As the Gulf Coast of Texas braced for the impact of Hurricane Ike, local residents felt its impact throughout Greensboro in the form of higher prices and lines at local gas stations.

Jeanette Moore of Greensboro figured she would fill up at the Exxon station at Friendly Center, where prices held tight for a while at $3.61 a gallon for unleaded. But the lines were too long and she had to get back to work, so she ended up at the Exxon on East Market Street near N.C. A&T. There, the cheapest grade of gas was going for $4.19 a gallon.

"It's going to come to the point where we have to decide if we're going to eat or are we going to put gas in the car," Moore said.

Kearara Bethea, a junior at A&T, was irritated because $19.50 got her only 4.64 gallons of unleaded for her Ford Escort.

"I'm a college student. I don't have a job," Bethea said. "This is ridiculous."

Adil Ali, a store employee, said a gallon of regular gas cost $3.69 a gallon Thursday. But when a tanker load of fuel came in this morning, the station had to pay a new wholesale price of $4 and change per gallon.

"If I get a load tomorrow," Ali said, "it'll cost me $5 a gallon for regular."

The scene was repeated all over the city Friday. At the Exxon at West Wendover Avenue and Cridland Road, lines stretched from the pump to the street at 2 p.m. as customers pumped gas that still cost $3.61 a gallon.

Remember the $3.61 per gallon gas at the Exxon at Friendly? Shortly after 2 p.m., a store employee was adding 49 cents to the price for each grade of gas. The new price for its premium grade: $4.34 a gallon.

A sign taped to the pumps asked customers to limit transactions to 10 gallons. Said the sign: "This request will allow us to provide gasoline to all of our valued customers during this time of limited supply in the southeastern U.S."

Erin Webb of Greensboro tried to stay philosophical as she filled her tank.

"It is what it is. You need gas," Webb said. "In Europe, people are paying $8 to $9 a gallon. That makes $4 to 5 a gallon not seem so bad."

Staff writer Lanita Withers contributed to this report.

This is the story that appeared in Friday's News & Record:

GREENSBORO — As the nation's most recent hurricane took aim at Texas and its oil refineries Thursday, drivers and gas station owners in the Triad reached the same conclusion. They don't like Ike.

That's because - long before it hit the Gulf Coast - the storm caused the wholesale price of gas to rise and forced some stations in North Carolina to restrict fuel sales.

The restrictions caught drivers by surprise.

"That's news to me," said Greensboro resident Joel Anderson, as he gassed up his Toyota at the Exxon station at 621 Green Valley Road. "(But) that doesn't worry me any more than I was already worried."

A sign on the pump said that because of limited supplies in the Southeast, motorists could buy no more than 10 gallons of gas.

Anderson's experience could become more common as Ike bears down on Texas, home to a quarter of the nation's oil refining capacity.

Drivers, station operators, travel experts and oil analysts all worried Thursday that the storm might be a repeat of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast just before Labor Day in 2005 and disrupted gasoline supplies throughout the Southeast.

In the Triad, gas prices jumped about 70 cents a gallon in the two days after Katrina hit. Some stations experienced shortages.

As Ike approached the Gulf, travel authorities urged drivers not to panic.

"The worst thing that could happen would be for motorists to flock to gas stations and top off their tanks," David E. Parsons, president and CEO of AAA Carolinas, said in a news release. "That will worsen the situation before anyone knows what the damage will be."

Parsons urged motorists to drive conservatively, not take any unnecessary trips and wait to see what the storm does.

At Steve's Friendly BP on Green Valley Road, Steve McKoin said he's seen no sign of panic.

But McKoin said his distributor has warned him to keep an eye on his supply of gas.

"We are starting to get some spot shortages. That's what scares me," McKoin said. "I'm (also) scared what the prices are going to do. My understanding is that gas could go crazy."

Oil analysts said there's no way to predict how Ike will affect gas supplies or prices.

But one thing appears certain. Even under the best of circumstances, the storm will pump up fuel costs in the short term.

"How much they go up depends on the extent of the damage to the refineries and the pipelines," said Doug MacIntyre, senior oil analyst with the Energy Information Administration in Washington. "There are certainly reasonable scenarios with this storm that could lead to record prices over the next week or two."

Gas prices in the Triad reached a record average of $4.02 for a gallon of unleaded regular on July 16. Since then, they had dropped more than 50 cents a gallon at some stations before beginning to rise again.

On Thursday, the average in the region had reached $3.64.

Ike's arrival comes on the heels of Hurricane Gustav, which damaged the Gulf Coast earlier this month.

"The problem the industry is facing is we are still recovering ... from the shut down from Gustav," said Bill Weatherspoon, executive director of the N.C. Petroleum Council, which represents the major oil companies in the state. "Now, we are having ... to prepare for the landfall of Ike. .... This causes a lot of stress on the delivery system."

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com