Any gas price increases or potential shortages locally should be only temporary, AAA officials said Monday. aa
Earlier this month, an inspector from the Alabama Surface Mining Commission found a leak the Colonial Pipeline in Shelby County, Ala. The pipeline has since been closed.
The underground pipeline is estimated to push some 1.3 million barrels of gasoline per day from Houston refineries across the Southeast and to the eastern seaboard.
So far, more than 336,000 gallons of gasoline have been lost, officials estimate.
With the pipeline closed for repairs, alternate routes are being used to route gasoline to the Southeast.
The company announced over the weekend that it plans to construct a temporary pipeline to bypass the spill, but it did not give a timetable.
AAA spokesperson Clay Ingram said Monday that the leak has affected distribution in parts of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, so there are stations that have run out of gas.
“However, gas is still being delivered to those areas, but at a much slower rate than normal,” he said. “Some stations have limit to how much gas you can buy.”
Ingram said this is a short-term situation.
“They hope to have the leak repaired by the end of this week, which should get things back to normal very quickly,” he said. “There is plenty of gasoline available, but the issue is transportation. With the pipeline operating at less than 50 percent capacity, they are having to find other methods of transpiration to get the gasoline and diesel fuel to the various stations (such as tanker ships, rail cars, and tanker trucks). We will see an increase in price, but that is due to an increase in transportation costs.”
Prices have increased on a state level to $2.01 per gallon up from $1.98 on Sunday and $1.94 a week ago.
In Andalusia, gas prices were around $1.95 per gallon locally Monday afternoon.