COLONIAL PIPELINE OPERATIONS IN U.S. BACK TO NORMAL AFTER HACK

Gas shortages along the US East Coast began to ease on Saturday (Sunday, May 16, 2021, in Manila) as the operator of the nation’s biggest fuel pipeline said it was back to delivering “millions of gallons per hour” after last week’s cyberattack, Jennifer Hiller and Stephanie Kelley reported for Reuters.

Ships and trucks were deployed to fill up storage tanks after the six-day Colonial Pipeline shutdown, the most disruptive cyberattack on record, triggered widespread panic buying that left filling stations across the US Southeast dry.

"We have returned the system to normal operations, delivering millions of gallons per hour to the markets we serve," said the company, which has begun a gradual restart of the pipeline on Wednesday.

More than 13,400 gas stations surveyed in the east and south by fuel tracking app GasBuddy were experiencing outages on Saturday, down from 16,200 early the previous day.

On Saturday evening, about 75% of gas stations in Washington, D.C. were still without fuel, an improvement from Friday's figure of 88%, the app showed. Shortages also eased in North Carolina and Virginia, but were about the same in Georgia. US gasoline demand dropped 12.6% from the previous week, probably due to an easing of "crazed" panic buying just after the pipeline shut, said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

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