:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/F7YDSEVG2ZBRHL2ZRPI3QKNIYY.JPG)
People in Hampton Roads are reporting that gas stations are sold out, station owners are seeing a spike in demand for fuel, and social media has been ablaze Tuesday with posts about a nationwide gas shortage.
As some locals panic about filling their tanks in the wake of a recent cyber attack on the nation’s largest fuel pipeline, one expert in the industry say there’s a misunderstanding about what’s really happening.
There is no gas shortage in terms of supply, said Holly Collins Dalby, a spokeswoman from AAA Tidewater Virginia. It’s more of a distribution challenge because the pipeline being down has created a shortage of tanker truck drivers.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/EK3VJ6PK2ZC2FEGA3MTTJEAXEI.jpg)
“While the Department of Transportation has relieved some of the restrictions for tanker drivers so that they can drive longer hours and more days in a row to deliver fuel, we have a shortage of some of those drivers,” Dalby said. “It’s a matter of getting the fuel to the station.”
She said there is plenty of fuel in the country, but the challenge is getting it to its destination as quickly as it’s needed.
The fuel frenzy started with a ransomware attack that caused a shutdown to the Colonial Pipeline, which carries refined gasoline and jet fuel from Texas up the East Coast to New York, according to the New York Times.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation believes was created by a group of hackers called DarkSide.
The shutdown led the Environmental Protection Agency to issue an emergency fuel waiver Tuesday to alleviate fuel shortages in states whose supply has been impacted, including Virginia, by the Colonial Pipeline shutdown.
The EPA waived federal vapor pressure requirements for fuel sold in reformulated gasoline areas of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., and the waiver will continue through May 18, the White House said in a news release about the waiver.
Gov. Ralph Northam followed suit by declaring a state of emergency which gives government officials the power to tamp down on harm caused by the pipeline shutdown, including by punishing suppliers for price gouging. It also loosens the state’s regulations to make it easier to get gas in tanks. His order remains in effect through June 10.
Dalby, from AAA Tidewater Virginia, said the attack on the Colonial Pipeline is also hurting Georgia, Tennessee and Delaware because those states normally pull their gas from there.
Workers are doing everything they can to get the Colonial Pipeline back up and running, she said. Their goal is to restore operations by the end of the week.
While Dalby has noticed some gas stations reporting that they’re out of fuel, she said it’s not a city or marketwide fuel outage right now.
She encourages people not to panic and offered some tips for times like this.
“Wait until your fuel tank gets to a quarter tank and fill up,” Dalby said. “Don’t let it go all the way down, but you don’t need to stop and put fuel in the tank every five miles that you drive.”
Reporters called about a dozen gas stations throughout the region and most said they’re seeing higher demand because of concerns about shortages. At just one, the Kroger in Grafton, was gas sold out.
Janine Mousso, who works at the Kroger on Shore Drive in Virginia Beach, said her store got its regular gas delivery Tuesday morning. But the way cars were lined up waiting, “you’d think we weren’t getting one,” she said.
Inside Business
“Everybody’s at my pumps,” she said.
Normally, the rush is in the afternoons after people get off work, Mousso said. Or on Fridays right before the weekend. It’s unusual to see a car at every pump in the morning, she said.
An employee at the Citgo on Lafayette Boulevard in Norfolk said her store’s seen increased traffic, too.
AAA encourages people to look for ways to conserve fuel by condensing different trips into one, removing extra weight from vehicles and if they have multiple vehicles, use the most fuel-efficient ones.
“If this goes on for, you know, 10 days or two weeks or more, until they can restore the pipeline and get that back online, then it’s going to become a larger problem across the country,” said Dalby, spokeswoman for AAA Tidewater Virginia. “But right now, Colonial Pipeline is working to get that back online and as quickly as possible. We just hope that’s what they’re able to do.”
For more information, visit www.epa.gov/enforcement/fuel-waivers.
Saleen Martin, 757-446-2027, saleen.martin@pilotonline.com