Share
Source: Michael Snyder/Northwest Florida Daily News via AP
The Colonial Pipeline has been shut down. It was hit with ransomware by what appears to be a criminal syndicate from Russia. It got hacked. Has the company paid the ransom? It won’t say, but this 5,500-mile pipeline supplies 45 percent of all fuel to the eastern United States. So, yes, prices will spike, and shortages could be seen from Alabama north through Baltimore. And in some places, like Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina, we’re seeing gas stations closing because they have no gas (via WEAR-TV):
State agencies and area gas stations say Monday that a local terminal failing to meet certain standards is partly to blame for the gas shortage in the Pensacola area.
White House Statement on Gas Lines Beginning on East Coast as Fuel Starts Running Out
Rising unemployment, massive inflation, “stagflation” and now
gas lines… Looks like that recent meeting with Jimmy Carter was about recreating the 1970s.
The White House responds to fuel shortages appearing in the mid-Atlantic and southeast:
“The President continues to be regularly briefed on the Colonial Pipeline incident. The Administration is continually assessing the impact of this ongoing incident on fuel supply for the East Coast.
We are monitoring supply shortages in parts of the Southeast and are evaluating every action the Administration can take to mitigate the impact as much as possible.
To be fair to the Times, this story was published yesterday and so maybe at the time it was written this paragraph was true?
Since the pipeline shutdown, there have been no long lines at gasoline stations, and because many traders expected the interruption to be brief, the market reaction was muted. Nationwide, the price of regular gasoline climbed by only half a cent to $2.97 on Monday from Sunday, even though the company could not set a timetable for restarting the pipeline. New York State prices remained stable at $3 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club.
Except it definitely wasn’t true even yesterday according to this story from CNN. There was a huge surge in buying yesterday.
Since the pipeline shutdown, there have been no long lines at gasoline stations, and because many traders expected the interruption to be brief, the market reaction was muted. Nationwide, the price of regular gasoline climbed by only half a cent to $2.97 on Monday from Sunday, even though the company could not set a timetable for restarting the pipeline. New York State prices remained stable at $3 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club.
“Potentially it will be inconvenient,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston. “But it’s not a big deal because there is storage in the Northeast and all the big oil and gas companies can redirect seaborne cargoes of refined product when it is required.”