Colonial Pipeline reopens key US gasoline route to East Coast after Georgia incident
By Anmol Choubey and Shariq Khan
April 1 (Reuters) - Colonial Pipeline said on Wednesday it has completed repairs on Line 1, the main gasoline route from the U.S. Gulf Coast to East Coast markets, and restored service after third-party damage in Paulding County, Georgia.
The pipeline was damaged by a third-party well-drilling crew on Tuesday, a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Line 1 delivers roughly 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.
Colonial is the largest fuel pipeline in the United States and the outage came at a bad time for U.S. consumers reeling from a surge in fuel prices due to the Iran war.
U.S. average gasoline prices crossed $4 a gallon for the first time in more than three years on Monday.
Early last year, Line 1 was shut for about five days after a leak in Paulding County, with limited market impact as it occurred in January, when gasoline demand is low.
