The U.S. Department of Transportation has ordered the company responsible to take corrective action before the fuel starts flowing again, according to the AP.
Advertisement
According to the latest statement issued by the company September 17, officials began excavation operations to fix the impacted section on the pipeline and work is expected to continue over the weekend.
Colonial earlier said most of the leaked gasoline is contained in a retention pond and there’s no public safety concern.
Colonial Pipeline, of Alpharetta, GA, operates the pipeline, and says that 519 workers are cleaning up the spillage, now estimated to be as much as 336,000 gallons of fuel. People in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and SC will see the biggest price increases and perhaps gas shortages, said Tom Kloza, chief analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.
In response to the shutdown, the governors in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee announced they would lift restrictions on the number of hours that truck drivers delivering fuel can work, in hopes of preventing fuel shortages.
Lines formed at gas stations across the South on Saturday and drivers who were able to find fuel had to pay more for it in some cases, as prices edged up following a pipeline spill in Alabama. “Colonial said it now anticipates fully restarting the pipeline next week”.
Georgia and Alabama declared a state of emergency on Thursday to allow easier road transportation of fuel by road.
In a release, Haslam called the order “a precautionary measure”, noting officials aren’t seeing any widespread fuel availability problems.
The distillate line has been since reopened and parts of the gasoline line are operating as well, but shipments have been slowed due to the pipeline damage, and that is already causing retail gasoline prices to rise.
The outage is expected to hit the East Coast and Southeast markets the most, as they rely heavily on Line 1 which brings gasoline from Houston to Greensboro, North Carolina, and on another line that ends in Linden, New Jersey. It is likely, he says, that there will be some gas stations that will not receive deliveries.
Advertisement
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Environmental Protection Agency waived Clean Air Act requirements for 13 counties in Georgia and five in Tennessee to help minimize disruption to those state’s customers.
