WRAL Investigates

Overreliance on Colonial Pipeline leaves NC running on empty

The Colonial Pipeline shutdown hit North Carolina harder than any other state, according to groups that track gas consumption and availability.

Posted Updated

By
Cullen Browder
, WRAL anchor/reporter, & Ali Ingersoll, WRAL data investigative journalist
RALEIGH, N.C. — The Colonial Pipeline shutdown hit North Carolina harder than any other state, according to groups that track gas consumption and availability.

Online site GasBuddy.com, for example, said as many as 74 percent of gas stations in North Carolina had no gas as of Wednesday night. That was down to 69 percent by Thursday afternoon, but neighboring states barely hit the 50 percent mark.

A major reason for the major impact in North Carolina is the state's heavy reliance on the pipeline. Upwards of 90 percent of the gas consumed in the state comes from that one source.

By contrast, other East Coast states have more fuel delivered by ship.

"Ports like Charleston, [S.C.,] Chesapeake, [Va.,] Baltimore and those type ports are much larger than our port at Wilmington," said Gary Harris, executive director of North Carolina Petroleum & Convenience Marketers, the trade group for gas stations statewide.

Harris also noted there’s limited storage outside the pipeline.

"There’s not a lot of product across the Southeast region sitting in storage tanks anymore," he said. "You don’t want to buy gasoline to resell and hold it and the price drops. ... So, they buy it so that they can pull it straight from the terminal, carry it over and drop it in the tanks and be used."

Colonial Pipeline has four lines running from Houston to northern New Jersey, with the largest, a 40-inch-diameter line, between Houston and Greensboro, where the company's largest storage facility is located.

At 18 different sites, mostly along the Gulf Coast, fuel is injected into the pipeline, which on average is about 6 feet underground, and the gas then moves at 4 to 5 mph up the East Coast. At that pace, when it's running at full capacity, the pipeline brings 63 million gallons of gas to Greensboro every day.

The fuel takes 14 to 20 days to move from Texas to New Jersey. Experts estimate it will be seven to 10 days before the full amount reaches Greensboro on a daily basis, although smaller amounts are already on the move.

Stephen Arbogast, a former Exxon executive who now teaches at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the Northeast has another advantage compared with North Carolina.

"There’s a whole secondary infrastructure up there to bring in supplies. That’s not the case down here," Arbogast said. "[State officials] are going to have to think harder about either better cybersecurity so this doesn’t happen again and/or some greater inventory levels.

Further complicating gas delivery is a shortage of truck drivers, with many laid off during the pandemic.

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