Gas stations along the Southeast coast are being slammed by panic buying and long lines — as the cost of a gallon approached what it was more than six years ago.
The shutdown of the biggest oil pipeline in the US from a crippling cyberattack believed to be orchestrated by a Russia-based criminal group pushed Tuesday’s national average price to $2.985 per gallon of gas, according to the Automobile Association of America.
That’s just a tiny fraction of a penny from the $2.99 and higher average prices last seen in November 2014, according to AAA.
The closure of the 5,500-mile Colonial Pipeline, which carries more than 100 million gallons of fuel from Texas to New Jersey each day, has stretched into its fifth day.
It sparked wild scenes of panic buying across Georgia, Florida, Virginia and South Carolina — with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp even declaring states of emergency in their areas. Kemp also issued an executive order suspending Georgia’s gas tax through Saturday to help offset the costs of higher fuel prices.
“I DON’T HAVE ANY GAS AND THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA DOESN’T HAVE GAS!! WHAT IN THE 2021 IS GOING ON !!” one panicked driver tweeted.
Yasheeka Wiggin told CBS News that the “unbelievable” lines in Marion, S.C., left her thinking “it was a catastrophe coming!”
“I’ve seen all these cars waiting and I was like, ‘OMG. I have to fill my tank up!'” Wiggin told the network.
Many motorists took to social media to share shocking scenes of massive lines at gas stations — often just to find no gas left.
Others shared images of panic-buyers filling up several gas canisters at once, with memes comparing it to the rush to buy toilet paper at the start of the coronavirus lockdown last year.
Tallahassee Democrat journalist Alicia Devine posted video of an “insane” line of cars waiting for gas in the Florida state capital — one of the few she found that even had any.
“I’ve visited five gas stations this morning and the Costco one is the first to have gas,” she wrote.
“A Costco employee just told a car trying to get in line ‘you’ll have to find the end of the line. I don’t know where that is.'”
Twitter user @CountryHickGuy posted a video clip that shows dozens of vehicles on the shoulder of a four-lane road, waiting to get in to a Quality Plus gas station.
“I mean, sure, the 1970’s were pretty cool, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to go back to big lines to get gas,” he wrote, along with a hashtag indicating he was in Hendersonville, NC.
In South Carolina, Greg Suskin of WSOC9 posted a video of cars waiting at a gas station that had completely run dry, saying that “people here told me they’d been to other stations and found the same.”
When he finally found some, he said a station worker stuck an “out of gas” sign on his pump as he got the very last of its supply.
“Everyone’s panicking,” Citi Stop gas station worker Jessica Alcocer told the Citizen Times of the store in Asheville, N.C., that ran out Monday afternoon.
The American Automobile Association (AAA) said that the biggest problem was actually panic buyers draining supplies.
“People hear something and panic,” Tiffany Wright, spokeswoman for AAA Carolinas, told the Citizen Times, insisting supplies were otherwise normal.
Florida Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services Nikki Fried also posted a video of herself at a crowded gas station in the Sunshine State, assuring residents that her office was “in close contact with federal and state agencies and the petroleum industry on this situation.”
“But most importantly, don’t panic to buy gas. Don’t hoard gas. And don’t form long lines at gas stations, like behind me,” she said, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb.
Still, one TikToker wrote, “They will try telling you that there is no gas shortage. NC, SC, FL, AL, AR, TN, KY, GA, and VA disagree.”
The attacked Alpharetta, Georgia-based company suspended all operations after it was hit Friday by a ransomware attack that could prove to be among the most costly in US history.
Colonial said Monday it hopes to get most of its operations back online by the weekend, but that’s not soon enough to avoid shortages and price hikes as supply has already started to dwindle.
About 7.6 percent of gas stations in Virginia were out of fuel by early Tuesday, according to GasBuddy analyst Patrick DeHaan’s estimates. He added that nearly 5 percent of gas stations in North Carolina, 3.3 percent in Georgia as well as 2.4 percent in Florida are also reporting that they’ve sold out of fuel.
The shortages spurred North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper to declare a state of emergency on Monday to help ensure the state maintains a sufficient fuel supply.
Panic buying appears to have exacerbated the limited supply. DeHaan said that across Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, demand for gasoline rose more than 40 percent.
Supermarket chain Ingles, which operates gas stations across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, is already seeing shortages and running completely out of gas at some of its locations, CFO Ron Freeman told the Citizen Times.
At an Exxon Mobil station in Asheville, North Carolina, a clerk answered the phone with “Hello, I’m currently out of gas,” according to Bloomberg. The outlet added that another station in Manning, South Carolina, had bagged their pumps and marked them “Out of service.”
Atlanta-based RaceTrac confirmed to WSBTV-2 that some of its Georgia gas stations are already reporting temporary outages. And WBTW-TV reported lines at stations across South Carolina, from Marion and Mullins to Myrtle Beach, are growing longer as drivers scramble to stock up on gas.
Concerns about gas shortages and images of panic buying rolled in on social media Monday night.
In a meeting on Monday, Colonial’s chief executive Joseph Blount warned state officials that supply shortages could occur throughout the week as the company and the federal government work to get operations back up and running, Bloomberg reported. The outlet added that the White House said it is “monitoring supply shortages in parts of the Southeast.”
While the company said Monday that it’s manually operating a portion of the pipeline running from North Carolina to Maryland, most of the line is still down. Colonial is working with the federal government to investigate and respond to the hacking. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Sunday that an “all-hands-on-deck” effort is underway to restore operations.
“We are working closely with the company, state and local officials to make sure that they get back up to normal operations as quickly as possible and there aren’t disruptions in supply,” Raimondo said.
On Monday, the FBI confirmed the cyberattack was carried out by a professional gang of hackers known as “DarkSide.”
DarkSide is known to extort cash from corporations and give a cut to charity, the Associated Press reported Sunday, citing sources familiar with the federal investigation.
In a statement reportedly posted on DarkSide’s website, the group claimed, “Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society. From today we introduce moderation and check each company that our partners want to encrypt to avoid social consequences in the future.”
The statement, provided to CNBC by the Boston-based security company Cybereason on Monday, added: “We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics, do not need to tie us with a defined government and look for our motives.”
While President Biden stopped short Monday of linking the Kremlin and DarkSide, he said that “there is evidence that the actors’ ransomware is in Russia.”
During a White House briefing, Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, also described DarkSide as “a criminal actor” but said that “our intelligence community is looking for any ties to any nation-state actors.”
