Lawmakers: NC needs more fuel pipelines

The Colonial Pipeline was offline for five days following a ransomware attack on May 8. Drivers quickly lined up at gas stations across North Carolina to fill up, draining available supplies and raising frustration and anxiety levels for those unable to get to a pump. At one point last week, three of every four gas stations in North Carolina reported being out of fuel.

The pipeline provides almost all of the gas used in North Carolina, and energy industry executives told state lawmakers Tuesday that North Carolina similarly has a single supply pipeline for natural gas, making the state vulnerable to outages.

"The Colonial Pipeline disruption could have been much worse, and it's foolish to presume North Carolina will not face a more severe energy supply shock in the future," Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, told members of the Senate Agriculture, Energy and Environment committee. "It could happen next week, next year [or] next decade, but it's a question of when and not if."

While the electric grid has increased its defenses against hackers, the pipeline industry is more vulnerable. If either of North Carolina's pipelines was to be disabled for a longer period of time, Jackson said, the economic and public safety fallout would be huge.

"The bottom line is, we should treat the fallout of the Colonial Pipeline attack as a warning and prepare accordingly," he said.

Overreliance on Colonial Pipeline leaves NC running on empty

David McGowan, regional director for the American Petroleum institute, told lawmakers that North Carolina needs more pipelines as backups. But the political climate has made it hard to build pipelines in recent years.

"One of every four residents in the state of North Carolina currently use natural gas for home heating purposes," McGowan said. "The state has fallen victim to opponents who are seeking to make it harder to maintain and develop critical infrastructure."