You must not have lived in Texas during hurricane Harvey so let me tell you a little story. After the hurricane a few refineries were offline which is understandable. From my recollection it wasn't supposed to be all that long until they got everything up and running but in the meantime there were a bunch of news reports about how the refineries were out. People panicked so bad because they thought they weren't going to be able to get gas and they ended up creating a shortage because everyone was panick buying. People were literally buying 50 gallon trash cans and filling them up with gasoline. Local Facebook groups full of posts asking which gas stations had gas and if they spotted a gas truck delivering to one. A buddy of mine hauls gas for a living and he said people were hugging him when he came to the gas stations to fill them up. I have a firm belief that had the media not blown it out of proportion and people had continued to drive and buy gas as they normally would we probably wouldn't have seen such a large disruption. So yeah I'm not surprised that they are trying to downplay it because if people whip themselves into a frenzy there will be real problems. It's the same story with toilet paper last year.