Company says pipeline resumes normal operation

Colonial: 200 gas stations per hour reopening

The operator of the nation’s largest gasoline pipeline — hit earlier this week by a ransomware attack — announced Saturday that it has resumed “normal operations,“delivering fuel to its markets, including a large swath of the East Coast.

Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline had begun the process of restarting the pipeline’s operations Wednesday evening, warning it could take several days for the supply chain to return to normal.

“Since that time, we have returned the system to normal operations, delivering millions of gallons per hour to the markets we serve,” Colonial Pipeline said in a tweet Saturday. Those markets include Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi,

Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C., Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

“All of these markets are now receiving product from our pipeline,” the company.

Gas shortages, which spread from the South, all but emptying stations in Washington, D.C., have been improving since a peak Thursday night. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Friday that the nation is “over the hump” on gas shortages, with 200 stations returning to service every hour.

“It’s still going to work its way through the system over the next few days, but we should be back to normal fairly soon,“she said.

Some stations were still out of gas in Raleigh, N.C., on Saturday as were many in Virginia.

Multiple sources confirmed that Colonial Pipeline had paid the criminals who committed the cyberattack a ransom of nearly $5 million in cryptocurrency to unscramble their data network.