by Keith Griffith at The Daily Mail
Colonial Pipeline has begun to slowly restart the nation’s largest fuel pipeline network after a Russian ransomware attack shut the line, triggering fuel shortages and panic buying in the southeastern United States.
But on Thursday morning, 71 percent of gas stations across North Carolina still had no gas, and half of the stations in Florida, Washington DC, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia were running dry, according to GasBuddy.
The outages spread from New Jersey to Mississippi, and the national average price of gas rose to $3.028, the highest level since 2014, according to the AAA Gas Price Index.
It will take several days for the 5,500 mile pipeline to return to normal operations, Colonial said, even as motorists in southeastern states jammed stations seeking fuel. A return to ample supplies could take two weeks, analysts said.
The cyberattack halted 2.5 million barrels per day of shipments of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel last Friday after the most disruptive cyberattack ever on U.S. energy infrastructure, causing chaos across the South and spiking gas prices nationwide.
Though Colonial has begun its system restart, relief will not be immediate for millions of frustrated motorists, and the pipeline operator warned of possible ‘intermittent service interruptions during the start-up period.’…
Continue Reading