Colonial said supply disruptions would be felt first in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and SC.
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In Georgia, the average price of a gallon of regular gas jumped from $2.09 on Tuesday to $2.31 on Sunday, according to GasBuddy.com, a consumer-driven website that helps drivers find cheap gas.
On Friday, Gov. Pat McCrory signed an executive order to help ensure there was an adequate supply of fuel across the state. The pipeline, a 3-foot in-diameter artery, is a critical connection from refineries along the Gulf Coast to numerous states along the Eastern Seaboard. The company doesn’t know when the spill started.
Gov. Nathan Deal has signed an executive order temporarily waiving certain federal restrictions thereby allowing truckers to stay on roads longer to deliver fuel.
The Colonial Pipeline services thirteen states and runs from Texas all the way to New Jersey.
Colonial shut its main gasoline and distillate lines that run from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast on September 9 after the leak was discovered.
Sheetz stations specifically use the Colonial pipeline for their gas.
Many gas stations in the Hampton Cove neighborhood, Jones Valley area, and along University Drive in Huntsville have either covered gas pumps or signs telling customers who want to buy gas that the station is out of gas, or close to being out of gas.
“I hit like three gas stations and all of them empy”, said one person.
Rob Gomes said his wife called him and told him to fill up after hearing about the shortage.
Colonial Pipeline says it is building a temporary pipeline that will essentially bypass the leak in an effort to expedite getting fuel supplies back to normal. “I’m anxious it might continue longer than we have gas reserved”.
Tennessee Emergency Management Director Patrick Sheehan tried to reassure drivers. “Panic was pretty high and [with people] filling their tanks and topping off their tanks, it will become a shorter supply”.
Quik Trip spokesman, Mike Thornbrugh, said several stations in SC are seeing outages. On their Face book page, the company wrote the following statement.
The company has said it is shipping gas on its secondary line to mitigate the service interruption. Colonial earlier said most of the leaked gasoline is contained in a retention pond near the city of Helena and there’s no public safety concern.
News outlets report that gasoline prices in some areas of the Carolinas have increased in recent days.
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A state of emergency has been declared in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia. That requirement of the Clean Air Act expired at midnight Thursday.
