Colonial Pipeline says it is moving fuel again. How long will it take to get here?

The hunt for gasoline grew more desperate in the Triangle on Wednesday, as the pipeline that brings the region’s supply of fuel up from the Gulf Coast remained shuttered another day.

But the end appears to be in sight. The operators of the Colonial Pipeline say they began the process of moving fuel through the 5,500-mile pipeline again at about 5 p.m. Wednesday, six days after it was shut down because of a cyberattack.

“Following this restart, it will take several days for the product delivery supply chain to return to normal,” the company said in a statement. “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.”

Gov. Roy Cooper said earlier in the day that operators of the pipeline had told the state it should be running again “by the end of the week and into the weekend.”

Cooper said panic buying is mostly to blame for the scarcity of fuel in North Carolina.

“Don’t fill up your car unless you have to,” Cooper said at a press event Wednesday. “Don’t go top off your car and fill up all of your cars, because that’s really what is driving the shortages right now.”

As of Wednesday morning, more than 70% of stations in the Triangle were out of gasoline, according to GasBuddy.com, an app and website that aggregate consumer and station reports on the availability and price of fuel. Long lines formed as those stations that did have fuel to sell.

The tight supply means people who find gas are paying more for it. The average price of a gallon of regular in the Raleigh area on Wednesday morning was $2.86, according to AAA, up 7 cents a gallon overnight and 17 cents more than a week ago. Average prices in Durham and Chapel Hill were a couple pennies higher.

AAA spokeswoman Tiffany Wright said the shortages and higher prices result from a combination of the pipeline closure and people buying more gas than they really need now.

Panic buying worsening the shortage in NC

“We expected that stations would have low availability this week,” Wright wrote in an email. “But in some areas (Carolinas/GA) it’s happening sooner because of panic buying.”

Wright said a lesser factor is the general shortage of truck drivers to deliver fuel to stations.

“It’s playing into the mix,” she wrote. “But the larger issue is the pipeline and not having the fuel readily available at terminals.”

Retailers get fuel refined on the Gulf Coast from tank farms along the pipeline. Colonial’s largest tank farm is in Greensboro, beside Interstate 40, while a branch serves a smaller set of tanks near Selma. Colonial Pipeline also has a branch that extends directly to Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

American Airlines, the second busiest carrier at RDU, says the fuel shortage is not affecting operations there. The airline has added refueling stops outside the Southeast on daily flights from Charlotte Douglas International Airport to Honolulu and London to conserve fuel.

“We are closely monitoring the situation and working around the clock to ensure that we have an adequate supply of fuel across our network,” American spokesman Brian Metham wrote in an email.

NC lawmakers write letter

Six Republican members of Congress from North Carolina sent a letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday asking what steps the federal government is taking to restore the pipeline’s operation and when that’s expected to happen.

“Our constituents want to hear a clear timeline for full pipeline system resumption,” said the letter, released by Rep. Ted Budd of Davie County. “Such a timeline will minimize insurmountable surges in demand at local gas stations.”

Earlier in the week, the federal government relaxed rules on the formulation of fuel and its movement to try to increase supply, including allowing the shipment of “overweight loads of gasoline and other fuels” on interstate highways.

The shortages particularly hurt consumers, small businesses and independent drivers who gas up regularly. But most large users of fuel aren’t worried yet.

The Wake County Public Schools has enough diesel on hand to keep school buses and delivery vehicles on the road, said spokeswoman Lisa Luten.

“It’s obviously a huge cost for us,” Luten said. “So you’re looking to buy when costs are low and buy large amounts so that you can operate but also be fiscally responsible. So right now, we don’t foresee an impact. But I think all of us are watching the situation to see if this will be going for a while.”

Luten said a bigger concern is the thousands of teachers and other employees who need gas.

“We have people who have to get to work,” she said. “Right now everyone seems to be managing, but we’re obviously watching the situation closely.”

Wake schools employees will get a reprieve on Thursday, when all regular calendar schools are scheduled to be taught virtually.

Drivers hunt for gas

The shortages forced many drivers to hunt for gas Wednesday. At a BP station on Creedmoor Road in Raleigh, yellow bags covered the handles of the fuel pumps. Every few minutes, another car would slow as it neared the station, its driver peering to see if this was one of the places with fuel left.

It took 2.5 hours for David Blair of Holly Springs to get to the front of the gas line at the Costco in Apex on Wednesday. Blair brought his laptop with him and was applying for jobs and watching training videos whenever the line stopped moving.

Blair had spent an hour trying to find a station with gas on Tuesday without luck, and said he didn’t mind the wait, because at least he knew Costco had fuel. His wife’s Honda CRV had only an eighth of a tank left.

Blair, who did cybersecurity sales, said the Colonial Pipeline situation highlighted the importance of that line of work.

“There only two kinds of people out there,” he said. “Those who have been hacked and those who will be.”

Sarah Watson left a climate science conference in Durham early Wednesday because she was worried about finding gas for the drive home to Charleston, South Carolina. After 40 minutes at a Sheetz station in Morrisville, Watson was the second car in line when the station’s attendants came out with bags to place over the pump handles.

”I was like, ‘Oh God,’” Watson said. “And I look over and there was this guy that had these really large, yellow gas cans that were probably six or eight gallons each, and he had a bunch of them in a pickup truck.”

Watson eventually found gas at a Marathon station in Benson that limited customers to 10 gallons each. As she continued down Interstate 95, she noticed many of the digital billboards for gasoline had been zeroed out, indicating their stations didn’t have any left, and she thought about the 10-gallon limit.

”I wonder if others had had that, if that would have stopped some of this,” she said.