The owner of the Colonial
Pipeline said Wednesday that it
has begun restarting operations
following a cyberattack last
week that shut down the main
fuel conduit serving the East
Coast.
(BY COLLIN EATON
AND MIGUEL BUSTILLO)
Colonial Pipeline Co., operator
of the vast 5,500-mile network
of pipes taking 100 million
gallons of fuel a day from
Texas to New Jersey, said it initiated
a restart at around 5
p.m. ET, but cautioned that the
process of fully restoring the
flow of fuel could take days.
The company, which estimates
that it provides 45% of
the East Coast’s fuel, shut down
the pipeline Friday after being
hit by a ransomware attack.
U.S. officials have linked the attack
to a criminal gang known
as DarkSide.
“Colonial will move as much
gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel as
is safely possible and will continue
to do so until markets return
to normal,” the company
said.
Colonial previously said it
had restarted some smaller
segments of the pipeline system
by operating them manually,
while its main line remained
shut down. The
company said that as of Tuesday
afternoon it had delivered
41 million gallons of fuel to various
delivery points.
The shutdown, in its fifth
full day Wednesday, spurred a
run on gasoline in the Southeastern
and mid-Atlantic regions,
which depend heavily on
the pipeline. The average U.S.
gasoline price vaulted above $3
a gallon for the first time in 6½
years as motorists lined up at
thousands of gas stations and
purchased all of the available
fuel.
As of Wednesday afternoon,
68% of the gas stations in
North Carolina were out of fuel,
according to price and fuel
tracker GasBuddy, which compiles
data when drivers report
such outages. In Virginia, 49%
of gas stations had run dry; in
Georgia, 45%; in South Carolina,
45%; in Tennessee, 18%; in
Florida, 14%; in Maryland, 13%.
Energy analysts and government
officials warned that consumers
who were panicking
and hoarding gas stood to
make the supply situation
worse.
“Hoarding does not make
things better,” Transportation
Secretary Pete Buttigieg said
Wednesday. “And under no circumstances
should gasoline
ever be put into anything but a
vehicle directly or an approved
container.”
The company has been tightlipped
about which parts of its
system were affected, but said
earlier this week that the attack
involved ransomware, a
type of code that can hold computer
systems hostage for payment.
It hasn’t said whether it
paid the ransom.
The news that a ransomware
attack could force the shutdown
of a major pipeline serving
millions of people underscored
how vulnerable the
energy industry’s infrastructure