New Dixie Oil President T. Scott Aman said today all company trucks are out attempting to get loads of fuel as repercussions from the hacking of the Colonial Pipeline trickle down locally.
“All trucks are attempting to get loads but with further travel and long lines, it will be very challenging,” he said in an email update this morning. “Please be conservative and be patient.”
In an email update Monday night Aman said, “We should all know by now the reason we are running out. The Colonial Pipeline was hacked. As you can imagine it’s a bad situation. Drivers are in long lines impacting the (numbers) of loads they can actually get if they can get. Please know that we are doing all possible.”
The company has sent trucks east to the Wilmington Port and west to Greensboro or Charlotte, in some instances both, to get what fuel supplies it can. “We are closely working with each of our suppliers to get what we can get where we can get it.”
Aman said his “recommendation is to be as conservative as possible, keep vehicles topped off and know that stations will have periodic — hopefully on short-term/24-hours outages. I hope we do not ever get to this point (or) need it, but sadly we may be pressed to have law enforcement help with allocation for first responders — (fire, police,rescue, and others).”
The entire driver team and other carriers the company uses is “doing all as safely possible to keep the stations/communities/customers we serve from running out. Sadly, outages will occur.”
The Associated Press reported today that the operators of the pipeline, which delivers about 45 percent of the fuel supplies on the East Coast, hopes to have services mostly restored by the end of the week.
The AP reported that the FBI and administration officials identified the culprits of the cyber attack as a gang of criminal hackers.
The Colonial Pipeline halted operations last week after revealing a ransomware attack that it said had affected some of its systems, the AP reported.
The FBI identified the criminal syndicate whose ransomware was used in the attack as named DarkSide, Russian speakers whose malware is coded not to attack networks using Russian-language keyboards.
The pipeline has a key role in transporting gasoline, jet fuel, diesel and other petroleum products between Texas and the East Coast.
The AP reported that Colonial is in the process of restarting portions of its network. It said Monday that it was evaluating the product inventory in storage tanks at its facilities.
Gasoline futures ticked higher Monday. Futures for crude and fuel, prices that traders pay for contracts for delivery in the future, typically begin to rise anyway each year as the driving season approaches. The price you pay at the pump tends to follow.
The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline has jumped 6 cents over the past two weeks, to $3.02 per gallon, which is $1.05 higher than a year ago. The year-ago numbers are skewed somewhat because the nation was going into lockdown due to the pandemic.
The attack on the Colonial Pipeline could exacerbate the upward pressure on prices if it is unresolved for a period of time.
