The Biden administration is trying to ease the supply panic that started this weekend.
Gasoline shortages caused by panic buying after the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline spread across the southeastern U.S. on Wednesday as the Biden administration sought to reassure consumers it was easing a raft of rules to speed delivery of fuel supplies.
The pipeline shipments were stopped on Friday after a ransomware attack on the company’s IT systems, prompting drivers in several states to swarm to gas stations, draining inventories and leading the White House to waive pollution rules and delivery restrictions to try to make sure the supply crunch doesn’t evolve into in political or economic crisis.
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But Biden’s $2 trillion-plus American Jobs Plan does not mention the need to protect new and upgraded infrastructure from hackers or propose any funding for this task, although experts and former government officials told POLITICO that it was critical that the final bill include significant cybersecurity spending.
The White House said Wednesday morning that the Department of Transportation will allow overweight truck loads of gasoline and other fuels across the South and up the Atlantic Coast states as far as New Jersey to use the interstate highway system. And the Department of Homeland Security has also concluded a review of shipping capacity on the water and “stands ready to review any temporary Jones Act waiver requests” to use foreign vessels to move fuel between U.S. ports, the White House added.
Colonial could announce by the end of today whether its computer systems were sufficiently sound to begin the days-long task of restarting the 5,500-mile pipeline.
The surge in gasoline demand in some regions has drained retail outlets of their supplies, with 64 percent of gas stations in North Carolina out of fuel, while Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia are reporting figures near 45 percent, according to Patrick De Haan, a market analyst at GasBuddy.com.
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Another complicating factor is that the economic slowdown from the pandemic, which already cut into refinery production last year, has hollowed out the ranks of the truck drivers needed to deliver supplies to retail outlets, and the driving schools to train new workers had been shut.
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Gasoline shortages caused by panic buying after the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline spread across the southeastern U.S. as the Biden administration widened its efforts to ease rules for fuel deliverieshttps://t.co/Y3Ab6cDaC7
— POLITICO (@politico) May 12, 2021
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