2.5 million barrels of oil per day are delivered from the Colonial Pipeline. In the US East Coast states, 45% of diesel, gas and jet fuel is supplied by this pipeline.
The pipeline was attacked by a gang of cyber criminals on Friday after which the work of repairing it is still going on.
After the emergency announcement, the fuel supply from here can be replaced by road instead of pipeline.
Experts say that because of this, fuel prices will increase by 2-3% on Monday. But they believe that if it is not restored quickly, its impact can be more widespread.
Who attacked
Several sources have confirmed that this ransomware attack was carried out by a cyber-criminal gang named Darkside.
They broke into the Colonial Network on Thursday and took almost 100GB of data in their possession.
After this, hackers locked the data on some computers and servers and demanded ransom on Friday.
He threatened that if the money was not given, he would leak this data on the Internet.
The company says that they are in touch with the police, cyber security experts and the Department of Energy to restore the services.
On Sunday night, he told that four of his main lines have come to a standstill and some small lines from the terminal to the delivery point have started functioning.
The company said, “Immediately after the attack was detected, we cut some lines of our system so that they could not be attacked. This stopped all our pipelines and some IT systems for a while, which we now recover Working to do. “
Gaurav Sharma, an independent analyst of the oil market, told the BBC that a lot of fuel has been stuck in the refinery of the state of Texas.
He said that by applying emergency, fuels like oil, gas can be sent to New York through tankers. But he warned that according to the capacity of the pipeline, this supply will be very less.
Gaurav Sharma said, “If they don’t fix it by Tuesday, then they will get into a lot of trouble.”
“Firstly, Atlanta and Tennessee will be affected and the effect will extend to New York.
He said that fuel demand is increasing in the US right now because people are coming out to recover from the shock of the epidemic, and oil companies are struggling to meet the rising demand.
