Shortages spread as major fuel line slowly cranks up
Gas shortages at the pumps have spread from the South, all but emptying stations in Washington, following a ransomware cyberattack that forced a shutdown of the nation’s largest gasoline pipeline. Though the pipeline operator paid a ransom, restoring service was taking time.
As Colonial Pipeline reported making “substantial progress” in restoring full service, two people briefed on the matter confirmed that the Georgia company had paid the criminals a ransom of nearly $5 million in cryptocurrency for the software decryption key required to unscramble their data network. The people spoke on condition of anonymity. Bloomberg first reported the payment.
The tracking service GasBuddy.com on Friday showed that 88% of gas stations were out of fuel in the nation’s capital, 45% were out in Virginia and 39% of Maryland stations were dry. About 65% of stations were without gas in North Carolina, and nearly half were tapped out in Georgia and South Carolina.
Colonial said Thursday that operations had restarted and gasoline deliveries were being made in all of its markets, but it would take “several days” to return to normal, and some areas may experience “intermittent service interruptions during this startup period.”
“Our current expectation based on the conversations between the company and experts at the Department of Energy is that the vast majority of markets and affected regions are receiving fuel at gas stations for consumers, and will continue to receive more fuel throughout the weekend and into early next week,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday.
A gas station owner in Virginia said panic buying is the problem.
“It’s like a frenzy,” Barry Rieger, a station owner in Burke, Va., told WJLATV.
A cyberattack by hackers who lock up computer systems and demand a ransom to release them hit the pipeline on May 7. The hackers didn’t take control of the pipeline’s operations, but Colonial shut it down to prevent the malware from impacting its industrial control systems.
President Biden has promised aggressive action against DarkSide, the Russianspeaking ransomware syndicate responsible for the attack. The syndicate’s publicfacing darknet site went offline on Thursday and its administrator said in a cybercriminal forum post that the group had lost access to it.