The havoc wrought by tropical storm Harvey began to spread well beyond the Houston area on Thursday as the damage to the US’s energy infrastructure sent the price of gasoline sharply higher and forced Washington to step in to prevent fuel shortages.

Almost a week after the storm first made landfall in Texas, almost a third of US oil refineries — many of which are clustered on the US Gulf Coast — have been affected by the storm, and refineries still in operation in the region are struggling to import crude because of outages at port facilities.

Gasoline futures were particularly rattled by Wednesday night’s announcement by Colonial Pipeline that it was shutting down the key artery carrying fuel from the Gulf coast refining hub to the East Coast, in a move that could drastically restrict petrol and diesel flows to some of the biggest cities in the US.