Gas shortages intensify in Southeast, with 28 percent of North Carolina stations now dry
By Taylor Telford
Panic-buying has emptied 28 percent of North Carolina’s fuel stations and is exacerbating gasoline shortages across the Southeast, underscoring the real-world implications of a cyberattack that forced Colonial Pipeline offline last week.
More than 17 percent of the stations in Georgia and Virginia were dry Wednesday, according to GasBuddy, and states as far as West Virginia and Kentucky also are running out. Major metropolitan areas have been hit hardest by the shortages, with more than 70 percent of the stations out of gasoline in Charlotte, Raleigh and Greenville, as well as roughly 60 percent of those in Norfolk and Atlanta, according to Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head oil analyst.
As of Wednesday, governors in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia had declared states of emergency and taken steps to relax fuel transport rules to ease some of the pain at the pump. But the run on gas stations also is colliding with a shortage of truck drivers, compounding the logistical challenges as states try to fill in for the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel.
The Colonial Pipeline system shut down Friday after hackers thought to be based in the former Soviet Union infiltrated servers and encrypted its data, demanding a fee to restore access.
The run on gas in parts of the southeastern United States is colliding with another logistical hurdle: a shortage of tanker truck drivers.
Well before a cyberattack forced the Colonial Pipeline offline last week, and before the coronavirus outbreak that set off massive disruptions to the labor force and to consumer behavior, the trucking industry has struggled to maintain a full workforce.
Before the pandemic, as the nation’s humming economy enjoyed a historically low level of unemployment, trucking companies turned to tried-and-true financial incentives to attract and retain workers: They boosted pay, offered bonuses and expanded their recruiting pool to consider people they previously would have turned away. But the shortage has persisted — owing in part, experts say, to the higher qualifications needed to transport fuel and to the attractiveness of other job opportunities.
In 2019, about 10 percent of trucks in the petroleum industry were sitting idle, according to industry estimates, but that figure ballooned to 35 percent, as the coronavirus pandemic drove down demand and tanker truck drivers fled to other lines of work.
“It’s not helpful that there is a shortage of drivers right now,” said Jeanette McGee, a spokeswoman for AAA. “However the industry is prioritizing refueling to areas that are strained at the moment.”
While experts say the United States has ample gasoline supplies, some terminals have gone dry because of the pipeline shutdown. Transporting fuel has now become a logistical choke point.
Typically, gas is moved from abundant inland sources that are in proximity to pipelines. But to work around the crisis, trucks are forced to drive further or run different routes, adding time to fuel deliveries. In addition to rerouting trucks, companies are relying on imports and other pipelines to make up for the shortfall.
Kirk McCauley, whose organization represents gas stations in Maryland, the District and Delaware, said some stations are running out of fuel as demand has surged. At the same time, a pandemic-related shortage of tanker-truck drivers has made it more difficult to get the tanks refilled.
As of Wednesday morning, McCauley said, tank farms in Baltimore, Springfield and Fairfax had enough fuel supplied by Colonial, but there weren’t enough drivers to get it from the storage facilities to gas stations. Many truck drivers who were laid off when people drove less earlier in the pandemic have found other jobs, he said, and it takes time for new workers to obtain the special licenses needed to transport hazardous materials.
“They’re seeing a crush of customers,” said McCauley, director of government affairs for the Washington, Maryland, Delaware Service Station and Automotive Repair Association. “People are filling up when they normally wouldn’t. The buying pattern has completely changed.”
John Townsend, spokesman for AAA-Mid Atlantic, said the average price of a gallon of gas hit $3 Wednesday morning, up 7 cents from last Wednesday. Prices were up 11 cents a gallon statewide in Maryland, 13 cents in Virginia and 3 cents in the District — the result of heightened demand, he said.
Some gas station owners are probably hiking prices, Townsend said, because they don’t know when they will receive their next shipment or whether it will cost more as demand soars.
