MORGANTOWN — While Southeast states are suffering gas shortages stemming from the disruption of the Colonial Pipeline, West Virginia has no supply issues, according to the Oil Marketers & Grocers Association (OMEGA) and Gov. Jim Justice.
But panicked people are causing outages at some stations, they said.
The vast majority of West Virginia’s gas comes from the Plantation Pipeline, OMEGA President Traci Nelson said, not the Colonial, which was shut down after suffering a cyberattack last week.
Plantation runs northeast from Louisiana to Maryland. Colonial runs roughly parallel from Texas to New Jersey.
“Honestly, we really shouldn’t be having the issues we’re having,” she said. “But it’s because the consumers are panicking. They’re going out and panic-buying and hoarding gas that they don’t need. That’s creating the shortages and the outages at the stations.”
She said OMEGA has received reports of station outages here and there across the state. “Our people are doing their best to get the fuel back to these stations.”
The problem here isn’t supply but transportation and infrastructure, she said. Fuel trucks have to sit in long lines at terminals. “It’s just taking time to get the stations refueled.”
Her message to West Virginians: “If you don’t need gas, don’t go buy gas.” Get it if you need it, yes, but “absolutely do not hoard gas, there’s no reason for it. There’s plenty of gasoline.”
Colonial’s most recent media statement, issued Tuesday, said that since its system was taken offline, working with its shippers, it had delivered about 967,000 barrels — 41 million gallons — to various delivery points along its system.
To help ease fuel transportation challenges, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a temporary hours of service exemption — lifting the cap on truck driver hours on the road — that applies to those transporting gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined petroleum products.
Justice said Wednesday West Virginia was added to the FMCSA’s regional emergency declaration that had included Alabama, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
Justice said, “The best advice I can possibly give you is just stay calm … We basically are creating our own fuel shortage right now. There is no real shortage of fuel right now.”
He said he’d received a report of a sighting at a Barboursville gas station where a flatbed trailer carrying what looked like liquid fertilizer was hoarding gas. That’s not necessary, he said, and only causes problems.
National media have been tracking supplies using GasBuddy, a website and app that tracks supplies and prices. Its most recent report Wednesday afternoon — using crowdsourced data from its app users — showed North Carolina was suffering the worst, with 65% of its gas stations without fuel.
Virginia stood at 44%, with Georgia and South Carolina at 43%.
West Virginia and Kentucky were at the bottom of the list of affected states, with 4% and 2% of stations without fuel, respectively.
The governors of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia have all declared states of emergency and lifted truck weight restrictions to address the shortages.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp
EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
