Five Hours in Line: Gasoline Shortages Expand Across U.S. South

(Bloomberg) -- The southeastern U.S. is suffering expanding gasoline shortages as nervous motorists race to fill up amid fears that ongoing shutdown of North America’s largest petroleum pipeline could leave the region stranded without fuel for days.

RaceTrac Petroleum Inc. warned motorists that some of its filling stations across the U.S. South are out of fuel as a result of the Colonial Pipeline Co. hack.

The shortages are impacting retail outlets in Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama, RaceTrac spokeswoman Megan Shannon said in an email. Fuel outages are spreading from Florida to North Carolina as the shutdown of Colonial’s 2.5 million barrels (105 million gallons) of daily deliveries drags into a fourth day.

GasBuddy analyst Patrick DeHaan said that retail gasoline sales rose sharply Monday in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. Nationally demand jumped 20%.

In Virginia and Maryland near Washington D.C., drivers are waiting as much as five hours to fill up their tanks and some motorists are topping off even when its three-quarters full, Liberty Petroleum Corp. Chief Operating Officer John Patrick said in an email.

The national average retail priced for gasoline rose to $2.985 a gallon on Tuesday, up 0.6% from a day earlier and 2.5% above the week-ago level, according to auto club AAA.

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