Colonial Pipeline is back up, but petrol shortages could linger

As Colonial Pipeline resumes deliveries, the US faces a new roadblock: a shortage of truck drivers to transport petrol to stations.

Drivers encountering fuel shortages in parts of the U.S. East and South may find it takes weeks before supply levels return to normal. Now that Colonial Pipeline Co. has resumed deliveries that were halted for nearly a week by a cyberattack, the industry is facing a new logistics problem on top of the lack of available fuel: not enough truck drivers to transport gasoline and diesel from distribution hubs to retail outlets. As of Friday morning, about 87% of fuel stations in Washington, D.C., were out of gasoline, 42% in Maryland and 30% in Florida, according to retail-tracker GasBuddy. While outages dipped slightly in North Carolina and South Carolina, more than half of each state’s stations are still without gasoline.