Natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, especially those that hit oil producing regions, lead to a decrease in the rate of product supply and increase current prices.
Because of Hurricane Irene, which damaged the oil refineries, it destroyed the refinery's production capacity, caused the price of gas to rise and reduced the quantity of gas due to changes in supply and demand factors.
On the following chart for supply and demand, the vertical axis depicts the price of gas and horizontal axis depicts the quantity of gas, any drop-in supply will shift the supply curve to the left, causing the