THE BUZZ
I N F R A ST R U C T U R E
‘PETRONOIA’ STRIKES DEEP The Colonial Pipeline panic illustrates Charlotte’s back-row position on the fuel supply line—and the prospect of another mad rush to the pumps BY GREG LACOUR | ILLUSTRATION BY ROB DONNELLY
ON THE EVENING OF TUESDAY, May 11, NBC Nightly News aired a segment on the domestic story of the week: A cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline, the larger of the two oil and gas systems that connect the refineries of the Gulf Coast to the eastern part of the country, had compelled drivers to make massive, frantic fuel purchases that emptied reserves and drove up prices. “You can see hundreds of cars here, and this is just one gas station,” reporter Tom Llamas effused. “Drivers here tell me they’re waiting up to an hour. That’s where the line starts. We can’t even see where it ends.” Alert Charlotteans—at least those watching television and not waiting up to an hour—recognized the setting: the Costco on Tyvola Road near Interstate 77. It wasn’t a random choice for NBC. Throughout the weeklong conniption, Charlotte and North Carolina outdid their
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Southeastern neighbors in the degree and thoroughness of what one national organization has dubbed “petronoia.” The night the NBC report aired, 14.7% of North Carolina stations were out of gasoline, compared to 9.6% in Virginia, 9.4% in Georgia, and 7.5% in South Carolina. By the next night, the North Carolina figure had ballooned to 74% (compared to 56% in Virginia, 53% in South Carolina, and 50% in Georgia). Charlotte hit its peak on the morning of Saturday, May 15, when an astonishing 74.6% of the city’s stations—three of every four—had empty gasoline tanks. So are we predisposed, to a degree not found in Richmond or Spartanburg or Macon, to hoard fuel when there’s a hint of a shortage? Maybe—but the geography of, and limited access to, the major fuel pipelines that carry gas to the East Coast happen to shortchange the Southeast’s
two largest metropolitan areas, Atlanta and Charlotte. (At one point, 73.4% of Atlanta’s gas stations were empty.) “These are two of the biggest markets that have two of the fewest possibilities to get resupplied,” says Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, who collected the statistics above and tweeted them and others throughout the ordeal. Colonial, which carries up to 2.5 million barrels of fuel per day from Houston to New Jersey through a system of pipes as much as 40 inches wide, is the larger of the two major pipelines that run throughout the Southeast, along a route similar to I-85. The other, the Plantation Pipeline, which begins near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and ends at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., can carry as much as 720,000 barrels. Both pipelines run through Charlotte. States and cities close to the beginnings
