May 9, 2021

The company that operates the biggest gasoline conduit to the East Coast said on Sunday it had no estimate on when it could restart the 5,500-mile pipeline that it shut Friday after a cyberattack, boosting fuel prices in jittery financial markets to their highest level in three years.

Most of the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies nearly half of the East Coast's transportation fuel from the hub of refineries near Houston, remains offline for now, the company said in a statement, though it restarted some smaller lines that run off the main arteries.

Any sustained outage could threaten to push up retail gasoline and diesel prices at the pump just weeks before the start of the summer high-demand driving season. Prices for wholesale gasoline in the financial futures market jumped as much as 4 percent in Sunday evening trading to their highest level since 2018, hitting nearly $2.22 per gallon.

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