Officials of Colonial Pipeline say they expect to be pumping gasoline to metro Atlanta by the end of the weekend, a day later than originally predicted.
In an online statement, the Alpharetta-based company said they had pushed back their estimate "based upon the newest information Colonial has."
With the work-week ending today, it appears that the region has avoided the kind of incipient crisis faced in September when a shutdown of the same pipeline sent pump prices spiking while a number of stations ran out of gasoline altogether.
This time, there have been virtually no reports of outages at local stations.
However, gas prices have climbed, with some drivers reporting individual stations bumping prices up as much as 20 cents a gallon. However, the average price of regular gas in metro Atlanta Friday morning was $2.31 a gallon, up 11 cents since Monday, according to Gas Buddy.
Prices ranged from a low of $1.96 a gallon to a high of $2.79, Gas Buddy said.
While exact figures are hard to come by, the huge pipeline provides about half the gasoline that metro Atlanta receives from the refineries along the Gulf Coast. Plantation Pipeline, also based in Alpharetta, operates another, somewhat shorter pipeline that pumps gasoline. That Plantation pipeline was not affected by either the September or the more recent incident.
Gasoline is also trucked into the region from elsewhere, especially the ports where it is pumped from ships.
After discovery of a large leak near Helena, Ala. led to the September shutdown, the price of gas jumped about 35 cents a gallon. It took about 11 days to restart the line and in that time, many stations ran dry.
So when an explosion and fire Monday killed one worker, injured five others and shut down the same pipeline, there were fears of a similar scenario.
Experts urged drivers not to top off tanks or fill up unnecessarily. The governor issued an executive order permitting truckers carrying gas to drive longer hours, an effort to encourage shipments of gas by highway.
And if a restart is truly just two days away, Atlanta seems to have avoided the darker scenarios of huge price spikes and outages.
The incident is being investigated by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, as well as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
An AJC analysis of Colonial done in September is available by clicking here.
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