Massive replenishment begins to ease US fuel shortages
Motorists in southeast US states on Saturday continued to hunt for fuel as a massive replenishment effort took hold, helping ease shortages from a cyberattack that cut supplies from Florida to New Jersey.
The six-day Colonial Pipeline shutdown was the most disruptive cyberattack on record. Widespread panic buying continued days after the pipeline network restarted, leaving filling stations across the US Southeast out of gas.
More than 14,000 gas stations surveyed by fuel tracking app Gasbuddy were experiencing outages, down from a peak of 16,200 early on Friday. The nationwide average for a gallon of regular unleaded was $3.04, from $2.95 a week ago, according to AAA.
An effort that involved ships under emergency waivers moving fuel from US Gulf Coast refiners to the northeast and 18-wheel tanker trunks ferrying gasoline from Alabama to Virginia helped to stem the losses.
In Washington, DC, Dennis Li was stuck on Friday at a Sunoco gas station that was out of fuel. He had tried to find gas at four stations during the day, with no luck.
“I’m running on empty to the point where I don’t want to drive anymore,” said Li, who is from Annapolis, Maryland.
Nicholas Swann had driven from his home in Washington to Bethesda to get gasoline, where the wait was 15 minutes.
“We were originally going to drive out to the beach this weekend but we don’t know if we will, because I can’t make it there and back on one tank of gas,” Swann said.
The hacking group blamed for the attack, Darkside, said it had hacked four other companies including a Toshiba subsidiary in Germany.
Colonial Pipeline has not determined how the initial breach occurred, a spokeswoman said this week. The 5,500-mile pipeline carries 100 million gallons of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel per day from Texas refineries to East Coast markets.