Florida Gas Prices Jump A Dime; Pipeline Shutdown Threatens Another Increase

May 10, 2021

Florida gas prices increased 10 cents last week, in response to the crude oil and gasoline futures price gains, according to AAA.

The state average is now $2.88 per gallon; three cents less than the highest price so far this year.

In North Escambia, a low of $2.76 could be found Saturday night at station on Highway 29. A handful of stations in Pensacola were a few cents less.

Now there’s a threat of even higher prices as the country’s largest pipeline – for refined products like gasoline – has been shut down since Friday, due to a cyber attack. The Colonial Pipeline carries gasoline and diesel from refineries in Texas, supplying states with fuel across the southeastern US and up the eastern seaboard to the New York harbor.

“The longer the pipeline is down, the greater the threat of rising gas prices,” said Mark Jenkins, spokesman, AAA – The Auto Club Group. “If operations are restored on Monday, drivers may see very little to no impact at the pump. A lengthy downtime, like a week, would be a different story. Sunday night, gasoline futures prices were up less than a nickel.”

NorthEscambia.com file photo.

Comments

10 Responses to “Florida Gas Prices Jump A Dime; Pipeline Shutdown Threatens Another Increase”

  1. free on May 10th, 2021 4:18 pm

    Yea, you shouldn’t give in to computer hackers/hostage takers… you kill them.

  2. William Lingo on May 10th, 2021 2:15 pm

    I agree with IT professional, proper back ups would resolve this in a matter of hours , it makes absolutely no sense why companies are falling victim to this garbage. My home computer was hit by ransomware years ago but it didn’t cause me any real trouble because I am religiously backing up my data.

  3. J.Larry Seale on May 10th, 2021 12:47 pm

    Boy, people are really dumb………..
    Pensacola along with other gulf coast
    area recieve they gas by barge !!!!!!
    So this another example of simple
    price gouging…………American style

  4. Cantonment Citizen on May 10th, 2021 12:12 pm

    Yeah I went to get gas last night around 8:00pm and everyone was out in Cantonment, except the Raceway at Muscogee Road and Hwy 29. Better fill up your tanks now before there’s NONE left. Hopefully this is not the start to a bigger issue!

  5. EMD on May 10th, 2021 12:06 pm

    What Anne said. Glad some are awake.

  6. IT Professional on May 10th, 2021 9:54 am

    I work for a tech company that remotely supports hundreds of servers around the country. Ransomware if not that uncommon. If proper backup schedules are adhered to (most likely are here) then ransomware shouldn’t disrupt service for more than a few hours

  7. Jeff on May 10th, 2021 8:42 am

    So for people criticizing the computer systems…ransonware attacks are not always from getting hacked. usually it’s because someone on the network downloads a document they think is legit and saves it to a shared location. when you open it, it then encrypts everything it can get its hands on.

    it’s really hard to defend against an attack when someone lets the attacker inside voluntarily

  8. Bob on May 10th, 2021 7:55 am

    @Anne

    This is how things will be in the future.

    Warfare isn’t soldiers and nuclear weapons anymore, it’s a battle for information. Cyberattacks have been steadily increasing, and the US is not equipped to defend against them. We NEED an infrastructure overhaul to reduce our threat vectors. Otherwise, Colonial Pipeline will just be one of many.

    I’m not sure what you mean when you say “chips and circuit boards” with “government-factory fail technology built in”. If you mean something like hard drives, it would be extremely easy to detect a trojan horse stored in the memory. If you mean something like the RAM, RAM cannot contain data unless it is connected to a power source. The processor is only for, well, processing information, and you would not be able to “install” a virus on it. Plausibly? Maybe you meant the motherboard. An extra chip installed might be able to run some kind of malicious code on boot, but why? Why would a hardware manufacturer risk their billion dollar company on the hope that no one leak what they had done and the no one would notice the new embedded chip?

    I do agree that we need to get people back to work. Let’s work together to demand businesses start paying their workers a living wage so people are incentivized to go back to work!

  9. Anne on May 10th, 2021 6:15 am

    Critical times for the USA with this cyberhack of Colonial Pipeline. Guess the ransom will be be paid and the pipeline will work fine until Next Time.
    Heard a woman from Biden Admin saying on news this morning, more or less, “This is how things will be in the future…”
    When the USA and other nations have surrendered the high tech jobs to China and other non-so-friendly nations a RED ALERT should have gone off Loud and Long.
    Computer chips and circuit boards are mostly made in China now and how reliable are those if they have a government-factory Fail technology built in?
    We need to pull back what we have moved offshore and get OUR folks off their backsides enjoying FREE Money for NOT Working and boot ourselves in the behind and get BACK TO WORK.
    Quit worrying if “Prince Charming” took a Non-Consentual Kiss from “Snow White” and get back to being the United States of America and the most Respected Nation in the World…..

  10. beth on May 10th, 2021 1:24 am

    way to go Colonial Pipeline , not spending some of those massive profits on the best cutting edge computer system protection to protect one of the most critical infrastructure assets in the whole country

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News