Gasoline demand spikes in several states after pipeline hack

New York CNN Business — A growing number of gas stations along the East Coast are without fuel as nervous drivers aggressively fill up their tanks following a ransomware attack that shut down the Colonial Pipeline, a critical artery for gasoline. As of 9 pm ET Tuesday, 12.3% of gas stations in North Carolina and 8.6% in Virginia didn’t have gasoline, according to outage figures reported by GasBuddy, an app that tracks fuel prices and demand. “Let me emphasize that much as there was no cause for say, hoarding toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic, there should be no cause for hoarding gasoline,” Granholm said during Tuesday’s White House press briefing, “especially in light of the fact that the pipeline should be substantially operational by the end of this week and over the weekend.” Demand for information on gasoline availability is so intense that GasBuddy itself experienced outages. Emergency steps to ease supply concerns Virginia Governor Ralph Northam issued a state of emergency declaration Tuesday afternoon “to prepare and coordinate our response” to the Colonial Pipeline shutdown. Northam said that while gasoline reserves in Virginia are “sufficient to address immediate supply concerns, he acknowledged that a prolonged pipeline closure will cause “gasoline supply disruptions to various retailers.” In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp signed an executive order suspending the state’s gas tax to help drivers cope with higher prices caused by the Colonial Pipeline hack.