The US government has issued an emergency legislation following a ransomware cyber-attack on the largest fuel pipeline in the country.
The Colonial Pipeline, which carries 2.5 million barrels a day – 45% of the East Coast’s supply of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel was completely knocked offline by a cyber-criminal gang on Friday and work to restore service is still ongoing.
US fuel prices at the pump were largely unaffected on Monday, but experts say that could change if the shutdown is prolonged.
Independent oil market analyst Gaurav Sharma said oil futures traders were now “scrambling” to meet demand and a lot of fuel was now stranded at refineries in Texas.
The emergency legislation relaxes rules on fuel being transported by road. This temporary waiver issued by the Department of Transportation enables oil products to be shipped in tankers up to New York, but this would not be anywhere near enough to match the pipeline’s capacity, Mr Sharma warned.
Many sources confirmed that the ransomware attack was caused by a group called DarkSide, who infiltrated the pipeline network on Thursday and took almost 100GB of data hostage promising to release it if a ransome was not paid.
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