Gas prices in the U.S. rose to $3 a gallon following Colonial Pipeline attack

DORAL, FL – The cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline is leading to gas stations outages mostly across the Southeast region as drivers rushed to fill up their tanks following the incident last Friday.

Now, the average national gas price reaches $3 per gallon on Wednesday, the first time it rises that much since October 2014, according to the latest figures from AAA. Just yesterday, motorists were paying $2.985 and $2.863 the previous month. 

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at fuel-savings app GasBuddy, which tracks prices and shortages, said the demand for gas Tuesday was up more than 14% compared to the same day a week ago.

And this rise in the demand is been harshly felt on stations where they are running out of fuel. As of Wednesday morning, 71% of gas stations near Charlotte, 72% of stations near Raleigh and 60% of gas stations near Atlanta were without fuel, according to GasBuddy.

Also, nearly a quarter of all gas stations in North Carolina were out of gas and about 15% of gas stations in Georgia and Virginia.

“Areas including Mississippi, Tennessee and the east coast from Georgia into Delaware are most likely to experience limited fuel availability and price increases (three to seven cents), as early as this week,” AAA spokesperson Jeanette McGee said Tuesday in a news release. 

Due to the situation, that was incited by a ransomware attack occurred last Friday to the Colonial Pipeline, a major system that delivers fuel across the East Coast, President Biden’s administration is considering waiving the Jones Act passed in 1920 to allow foreign tankers to transport gas and diesel fuel, reports Bloomberg. 

The service of this system was shut down on Saturday but it may be restored by the end of the week, which could limit most of the fallout. 

But despite this, experts are discouraging people from buying gas desperately since according to economists the gas shortage experimented is not being caused by the Colonial Pipeline shutdown alone. It would have to last several days before there’s a substancial impact, reports McClatchy News.

In the meantime, the governors of Florida, North Carolina and Virginia declared states of emergencies in the recent hours. Locally, Gov. Ron DeSantis made the announcement on Tuesday.

“This is something that’s a very serious attack on critical infrastructure in our country,” DeSantis said. “This pipeline doesn’t actually touch Florida, but it does feed into many of our gas stations, so we’ve declared a state of emergency. We started lifting restrictions to be able to get more fuel into pumps.”

If you feel concerned about gas availability at your area, use the GasBuddy app which tells users which stations have no gas, no fuel or no power. 

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