The gas shortage that hit the coastal Carolinas closed gas pumps and rippled through the local economy Thursday.

Tourists getting ready for the Labor Day holiday canceled hotel reservations.

Police in Horry and Georgetown counties decided to handle nonemergency complaints with a phone call instead of a patrol car.

And truck drivers added a surcharge to deliveries. They met Thursday to agree on the charge that they plan to add to construction-material loads beginning Tuesday.

Gas prices jumped by more than 50 cents a gallon Wednesday in Ohio, 40 cents in Georgia and 30 cents in Maine. In southern Illinois, gas prices at some stations jumped more than 50 cents in less than four hours Thursday morning.

Most prices locally stayed below the $3.22 that shocked consumers Wednesday and sparked frantic gas buying. A few areas in western Horry County had prices as high as $3.39 a gallon.

To ease the shortage, Gov. Mark Sanford urged residents to buy what they need and not to fill extra jugs of gasoline. He said he expects high prices and low supply to continue for two weeks.

While stopping short of urging South Carolinians not to travel for Labor Day weekend, Sanford said "less is more from the standpoint of travel. ... There's no place like home."

The shortages were caused by disruptions in the Colonial and Plantation fuel pipelines after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The companies said they should be pumping more fuel through their lines before this weekend.

Local economist Al Parish said such 50-cent price jumps are price gouging by the oil industry.

"If they're charging over $2.70 or so, they are taking advantage," said Parish, an economist at Charleston Southern University. "I hope the public will remember the stations that do this and severely punish the price gougers once this is all over with."

Skyrocketing prices cannot legally be price gouging unless the area is in a governor-declared state of emergency, according to the S.C. attorney general's office.

Parish said he wished the governor would declare a state of emergency so raising prices to an "unconscionable" level would be illegal.

Parish also said if prices were to remain above $3 a gallon for months, it would send the national economy into a recession.

The coast is not experiencing as much of a shortfall as the Upstate because gasoline is brought in by ship, said Kay Clamp, executive director of the S.C. Petroleum Council.

Most local stations reported having plenty of supply, but a few were out of some grades of gas or were awaiting shipments.

The Wilco in Pawleys Island ran out early Thursday morning but got another shipment by the afternoon.

The rush to the pumps caused shortages in the towns to the south and southwest of Georgetown County, so customers from Kingstree, Johnsonville and Hemingway went to Georgetown County to buy gas.

"Right now, we have gas; I don't know if it will last," an employee at Mingo Esso in rural Georgetown County said. "My tanks are jam full. All of them are filling their tanks up."

Several gas stations sold out of regular gas in Horry County, including Convenience Corner on S.C. 90, the Jerry Cox Co. on Hilton Road, and Hess/Tiger Mart on 10th Avenue North.

The Nick Mart on S.C. 90 in Little River was sold out of everything Thursday except diesel fuel.

Closer to Conway at Walker's Variety on U.S. 701 North, Nancy Farrell said they were forced to raise prices.

As of 2 p.m. Thursday, a gallon of regular unleaded was $3.36, she said.

"Nobody wants to buy it. I don't think there's anyone that hasn't complained about it today," Farrell said. "Our gas sales may drop a little."

One station owner in Socastee could not raise his prices because his old pumps, built in 1985, wouldn't register above $2.99.

Owner Basem Hilal said his next shipment from Exxon was going to cost him $3.19 a gallon, so he will have to shut down.

"Either prices will have to come down or I will have to buy new pumps," he said.

That would cost him about $44,000.

National effect

The Bush administration announced a series of measures Thursday designed to ease a nationwide gasoline-supply crunch, including making its first loan from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and allowing foreign-registered vessels to deliver oil between U.S. seaports.

The Energy Department announced it would release 6 million barrels of oil from the reserve to ensure that ExxonMobil Corp. has sufficient crude oil supplies to make gasoline. That first loan, which is bigger than all loans from the emergency reserve during last year's Hurricane Ivan, went to produce more gasoline at ExxonMobil's Baton Rouge, La., refinery.

Bush detailed additional steps to ease the supply disruptions caused by Katrina's roar through the Gulf Coast region, which knocked out about one-tenth of the nation's refining capacity.

A big part of the problem, he said, was that pipelines that feed refineries are inoperable or are operating at reduced capacity. He cited the vast pipeline network operated by Colonial Pipeline, which supplies much of the Southeast with oil, as operating at 50 percent of capacity.

The company said in a statement that it expects to be delivering oil at 86 percent of its normal capacity by the middle of next week.

Staff writers Kelly Marshall, Kathleen Vereen Dayton and Tonya Root, and the Washington Bureau contributed to this report.