May 19, 2021
8:30 AM EDT
The Colonial Pipeline region continues to recover from the impact of the outage. In their update on Tuesday, May 18th at 4pm EDT, Gasbuddy showed Colonial destinations from Atlanta to Richmond are those still struggling to recover.
On Tuesday, the Colonial had another issue which put fear and trembling into the fuel logistics industry. Shippers were unable to access the system used to nominate shipment barrels and designate destinations for them. The nomination system is operated by an outside firm, Transport4 and was not impacted by the ransomware attack. Colonial later reported the incident was a function of their tightening of their IT security. The good news is the system was restored in midday with limited impact overall.
Diversified is continuing to long-haul for our customers, especially those needing gasoline in Atlanta, Charlotte, and Richmond. Branded gasoline will be the first to be restored. Watch branded stations (Shell, Citgo, Marathon, BP, etc.) to gain a sense of how the region is improving overall. Branded stations returning to full inventories is a good indicator of a market recovering.
