Gas Stations Are Starting to Run Out of Fuel After Colonial Pipeline Shutdown

Motorists across a broad swath of the U.S. East Coast and South are struggling to find gasoline and diesel as filling stations run dry amid the unprecedented pipeline disruption caused by a criminal hack.

From Virginia to Louisiana, convenience stores and corner gas stations are turning away customers as tanks tap out amid panic buying. The White House relaxed some environmental rules in a bid to allow gasoline to flow in from other parts of the country.

One Washington D.C.-area fuel distributor warned that “catastrophic” shortages are imminent and called on government officials to order school buses to stay off the roads. Four days into the crisis, Colonial Pipeline Co. has only managed to restart a small segment of the pipeline as a stopgap measure and doesn’t expect to be able to substantially restore service before the weekend.

“Tt’s going to be catastrophic,” said John Patrick, chief operating officer of Liberty Petroleum LLC in Chester, Maryland. “Governors should declare a state of emergency and ask people chasing tanker trucks to gas stations to stay home. School buses stay put.”

U.S. average retail gasoline prices have risen to their highest since late 2014 due to the disruption, almost touching $3 a gallon. That could add to broader inflationary pressures as commodity prices from timber to copper also surge.

The Colonial pipeline is the most important conduit for distributing gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in the U.S., connecting refineries along the Gulf Coast to population centers from Atlanta to New York and beyond. Each day, it ships about 2.5 million barrels (105 million barrels), an amount that exceeds the entire oil consumption of Germany.

The vital economic lifeline has been shut since late Friday. Without the Colonial system, many cities and airports are forced to seek alternative supplies imported by tanker ships, barges or trucks.

On Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation pointed the finger at a ransomware gang known as DarkSide. While cyberattacks are increasingly used around the world as a weapon against geopolitical rivals, there was no indication that the current crisis could boil over internationally. President Joe Biden stopped short of blaming the Kremlin for the attack, despite some evidence that the hackers or the software they used are “in Russia.”

Russia has no connection to the cyberattack, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.

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