By Shariq Khan
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Colonial Pipeline's main U.S. gasoline artery is expected to be shut through Friday as the company continues to search for the source of a suspected leak in Paulding County, Georgia, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
Line 1, one of two mainlines on the more than 5,500-mile Colonial system, was shut on Monday night after Colonial received reports of a gasoline release and began investigating. The pipeline moves gasoline from Texas to North Carolina and was earlier expected to resume service on Tuesday night, according to market sources.
"Colonial continues on-site work to identify the source of the suspected release on our gasoline pipeline," a Colonial spokesperson said on Wednesday. "At this time, we estimate that Line 1 will remain down through Friday," they added.
That timeline puts the outage on par with a high-profile 2021 cyberattack that forced the entire Colonial network to shut down. During that attack, the company's mainlines were out for about a week, leaving gas stations empty and lifting fuel prices in multiple cities along the East Coast.
Shippers will be informed if there are any changes to the timeline for Line 1's restart, the Colonial spokesperson said, adding that the company is working with its customers to provide limited gasoline deliveries on other parts of its pipeline network.
Line 1 delivers 1.5 million barrels of gasoline each day from Houston, Texas, to storage tanks in Greensboro, North Carolina, from where the motor fuel is distributed locally or shipped to other markets all the way up to the New York Harbor.
It is almost always chock-full of gasoline, supplying about half of the East Coast's daily demand for the motor fuel, making it one of the most crucial parts of the domestic U.S. gasoline supply chain.
As of now, the ongoing outage is not expected to cause a large jump in retail gasoline prices because of high fuel production and inventories in the country, GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan said.
Retail gasoline prices in Atlanta, Georgia, remain steady despite the outage, De Haan said. However, panic buying from consumers could create challenges, he warned.
"If consumers freak out and panic, even against the pool of gasoline that's rising, there is always a possibility - pipeline disruption or not - that stations could run low on inventory," he said.
As of Jan. 10, the U.S. East Coast had 63.4 million barrels of gasoline in storage, equating to more than 20 days of supply, according to Reuters calculations based on government data.