Gas prices, already close to $3 a gallon after a cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline, are expected to keep rising through the week, especially in the eastern United States.
“We’re expecting to see price increases to continue through the week, and in particular in the southeast region and in the northeast, because we are seeing directly impacted areas along the terminals of the pipeline that remain out,” Devin Gladden with the American Automobile Association (AAA) told The Epoch Times.
“And so as we see imports, deliveries from trucks, fill that gap, that may mean that higher costs will be associated with those deliveries and that is certainly causing prices to increase at the pump for consumers,” he added.
Prices rose six to seven cents on average per gallon in the southeast on Monday, according to AAA data. The average price nationwide as of Tuesday was $2.95 per gallon, with prices ranging from a low of $2.64 in southern states to a high of $4.10 per gallon in some western states and Illinois.
Gas prices were already rising before a group called DarkSide stole data from Colonial and locked its computers with ransomware, a method in which attackers hold crucial information from companies until they’re paid.
As a result, Colonial took certain systems offline, temporarily halting all pipeline operations.
The company operates a pipeline that spans more than 5,500 miles from Texas to New Jersey.
Colonial ships 100 million gallons of fuel per day, supplying stations up and down the East Coast, Robert Dauffenbach, senior associate dean of economic development and impact at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business, told The Epoch Times.
“That’s sort of an indication of how important that operation is to supply gasoline along the Eastern Coast,” he said.
