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Well-Known Angler
Gas shortage could last 'weeks' despite Colonial Pipeline restart: expert
Despite the Colonial Pipeline system getting back online, motorists are still draining gas stations, and it may take ‘weeks’ until gasoline supply returns to normal, warns GasBuddy’s senior petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan.
Despite the Colonial Pipeline system getting back online, motorists are still draining gas stations, and it may take "weeks" until gasoline supply returns to normal, warns GasBuddy’s senior petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan.
“This situation has spiraled out of control,” De Haan told Yahoo Finance Live. “It's kind of like a game of whack-a-mole where stations fill up their inventories, and then people decimate the inventory. I don't think that's going to stop for a week, maybe two weeks, and then fully back to normal in three to four weeks.”
The Colonial Pipeline system, which is the primary gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel pipeline serving the East Coast, initiated the restart of operations Wednesday around 5 p.m. ET, but warned in a statement that some markets could experience “intermittent service interruptions during the start-up period.”
As of Thursday morning, nearly three-quarters of gasoline stations in North Carolina were out of gasoline, according to GasBuddy, while about half in Virginia, Georgia and South Carolina ran dry.
De Haan warns those numbers may drift higher over the next 48 hours before starting to retreat.