Lining Up
In Asheville, North Carolina, Aubrey Clements, a clerk at an Exxon Mobil Corp. station answered the phone with “Hello, I’m currently out of gas.” The Marathon gas station in Elizabethtown had roughly two dozen cars waiting to fuel up, an employee said.
A "fuel out" sign at a Marathon gas station in Elizabethtown, North Carolina, U.S., on May 10.
Drivers pulling into a station with a sign offering unleaded gasoline for $2.649 per gallon in Manning, South Carolina, were met with pumps covered in yellow and red “out of service” bags.
Emergency shipments of gasoline and diesel from Texas are already on the way to Atlanta and other southeastern cities via trucks, and at least two Gulf Coast refineries began trimming output amid expectations that supplies will begin backing up in the nation’s oil-refining nexus.
The national average retail gasoline price rose to $2.985 a gallon, the highest since November 2014, according to the American Automobile Association. The premium for wholesale gasoline in the New York area expanded to its widest in three months.
The event is just the latest example of critical infrastructure being targeted by ransomware. Hackers are increasingly attempting to infiltrate essential services such as electric grids and hospitals.
Ransomware cases involve hackers seeding networks with malicious software that encrypts the data and leaves the machines locked until the victims pay the extortion fee. This would be the biggest attack of its kind on a U.S. fuel pipeline.
The Northeast can secure gasoline shipments from Europe but it will come at an increasing cost the longer the pipeline stays shut.
Landlocked cities face the greatest danger of fuel shortages compared with those with access to water-borne deliveries, said Steve Boyd, senior managing director at Houston-based distributor Sun Coast Resources Inc. If the pipeline remains down for many more days, he’s anticipating a “massive surge” in orders.
—With assistance from Gerson Freitas Jr., Lucia Kassai, Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Mary Schlangenstein, Jill R. Shah and Javier Blas.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.