Southern U.S. gas crisis

This is a very strange story indeed. My wife and I just took a trip from Michigan to South Carolina to visit family. Took I75 to I40 in knoxsville, TN to I26 in Asheville, NC to I85 to a town south of Anderson, SC its just a few miles from the Georgia border. On the way down didn't notice anything strange unitll we got into Henderson, NC we pull of on the exit at about 530am and all three gas stations on the exit are out of gas. One of them even has the prices down off the board, gas prices are just blank. We drive further to asheville, NC and one of the two gas stations are out and the other has regular gas only. The whole stay witch was 7 days the small gas station down the road in a very small town of about 100 people is never out of gas. But all the surrounding towns, Abbeville, Greenwood, Anderson, and Greenville all in South Carolina are having gas shortages. Some of the stations have been out for weeks others would have gas than be out again the next day.
Some of the local talk was that the stations could not afford the next shipment of gas because the price spiked so fast. Gas prices went from about 3.30 to over 3.85 and as high as 4.00 dollars a gallon in just over a week