PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Colonial Pipeline is up and running again after a cyberattack forced the company to shut down operations late last week. Prices at the pump are averaging $3 a gallon for the first time in seven years, and the company says supply issues may linger in some parts of the country, but officials say there is no reason for people on Pennsylvania or New Jersey to panic.
Colonial restarted its pipeline at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, according to company representatives:
"Following this restart, it will take several days for the product delivery supply chain to return to normal. Some markets served by Colonial Pipeline may experience, or continue to experience, intermittent service interruptions during the start-up period. Colonial will move as much gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel as is safely possible and will continue to do so until markets return to normal."
Colonial supplies 45% of the East Coast’s fuel.
Many gas stations in the southeastern part of the United States ran out of fuel. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis with GasBuddy, an app that tracks fuel prices and demand, tweeted that at least half of the gas stations in Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas had run dry as of Wednesday night.
Governors in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia declared states of emergency and took steps took steps to relax fuel transport regulations to ease cost at the pump, according to the Washington Post.
However, up in the Philadelphia area, there were no widespread gas shortages, and officials are urging people to not panic.
"Pennsylvanians should know we are expecting minimal impact in our commonwealth," Gov. Tom Wolf tweeted. "There is no need for anyone to stockpile gasoline. Widespread panic buying could result in unnecessary perceived shortages."
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was asked about the situation during his COVID-19 briefing on Wednesday. He said there were no widespread problems in the state, and he compared the situation, overall, to the pre-pandemic run on toilet paper last year.
"And you want to go out and get gas and get ahead of the pack, as it were. So there’s some amount of natural behavior like that," Murphy said. "We’re monitoring this very closely."
Fuel crisis or no, drivers in the Philly area are feeling the affects of higher prices. GasBuddy reported Wednesday the average price of a regular gallon of gas had surpassed the $3 mark in the United States for the first time since 2014. But experts say the price of fuel started to go up long before the pipeline cyberattack.
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"That’s because we’ve seen gasoline demand increasing. People are getting out more and driving more and traveling more, as more of us are vaccinated," AAA spokeswoman Jeannette McGee said to CBS News.
Some experts predict prices will level off.
"Rest assured that summer gas prices will not be setting records," De Haan wrote on a GasBuddy blog post. "They will settle down to levels more similar to 2018: the national average briefly rising above $3/gallon but eventually falling back under and remaining in the upper-$2 to low-$3 per gallon range."
Audacy's Rebekah Sager contributed to this report.