Update(1452ET): Emergency declarations have been issued in 17 states and Washington, DC due to fuel shortages stemming from the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack.
The emergency declaration covers Alabama, Arkansas, D.C., Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
Update(1427ET): In a White House press briefing, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the government “will have no tolerance for price gouging” during the gasoline shortage in the Southeast. She said gas station owners should “act responsibly.
"We will have no tolerance for price gouging": Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says gas station owners should "act responsibly" during gas shortage caused by Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, and urges consumers to report any instances of price gouging https://t.co/9NDfkrUKWs pic.twitter.com/fFVHdpPmr7
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 11, 2021
Granholm said the Colonial pipeline should be “substantially operational by the end of this week and over the weekend.”
… let’s hope.
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Update (1420ET): Many folks are being pushed to their breaking point. There’s gasoline, lumber, chicken, housing, semiconductor, and commodity shortage, among others, transforming Biden’s America into a glimpse of socialist Venezuela.
Bloomberg reports that some people in the Southeast waited five hours Tuesday to fill up their vehicle. That is, if they could even find gasoline.
As a result of the Colonial Pipeline Co. hack, RaceTrac Petroleum Inc. warned customers that some of its gas stations in the Southeast were experiencing shortages. A spokeswoman for the company said its filling stations in Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama were experiencing disruptions.
Fuel shortages have spread from Florida to Virginia as the shutdown of Colonial’s 2.5 million barrels pipeline remains partially offline for the fourth day. We noted earlier that a section of the pipeline system from Greensboro, North Carolina, to Baltimore had been briefly turned on.
Liberty Petroleum Corp. Chief Operating Officer John Patrick said customers in Virginia and Maryland waited as long as five hours to fill up their tanks. People are also paying exorbitantly high prices as shortages lead to empty stations. According to AAA, the national average retail price rose to $2.985/gallon Tuesday, the highest since 2014, 2.5% over last week’s figures.