Colonial Pipeline halts services amid Hurricane Ida, restart pending, report says
The country's largest pipeline reportedly stopped services amid the storm and expects to resume operations later today.
The stoppage shouldn't last more than a day, depending on what Ida does.
Colonial Pipeline temporarily halted services this weekend as Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana, Reuters reported Sunday. The owner of the nation's largest petroleum pipeline told the news agency it expects to resume operations on Monday after it assesses damage from Ida, which is now classified as a tropical storm as it moves into the eastern part of the US.
The company did not immediately return a request for comment, though according to Reuters, deliveries from Houston to Greensboro stopped over the weekend. So far, it doesn't appear this measure should have any sort of ripple effect like the ransomware attack that took the pipeline offline earlier this year.
Fuel prices this year continue to remain high as Americans are eager to travel to make up for lost time amid 2020's lockdown measures. Combined with higher demand, a shortage of tanker drivers continues to hamper the industry. Drivers left the industry en masse amid the early days of the pandemic, and without them delivering fuel regularly, supply remains short.
