US fuel deliveries resume, Biden urges calm: Update 3

Adds Colonial shipping details, Valero waiver.

President Joe Biden today urged drivers in the US southeast and Atlantic coast to halt panic buying as supplies across the Colonial Pipeline system return to the region over the next week.

Relaxed environmental and transportation regulations will help stretch available supplies and speed fuel to areas cut off by a nearly week-long outage of the 2.5mn b/d system moving fuel from the US Gulf coast through the southeast and into the New York Harbor market, he said in an early afternoon address.

"This is a whole of government response to get more fuel more quickly to where it's needed and to limit the pain being felt by American customers," Biden said.

Colonial Pipeline expects every US southeast and Atlantic coast market it serves to receive fuel today, and expects all systems to return to service by the end of the week.

Emergency waterborne fuel deliveries and the slowly restarting pipeline network began refilling areas hammered by panic-buying yesterday.

US regulators last night approved waivers of the Jones Act to allow gasoline and jet fuel deliveries from internationally-flagged vessels moving between US ports, including one for Valero. The movements will speed deliveries of fuel to regions drained by the shutdown of the pipeline network that started late last week.

"We will grant additional waivers if necessary," Biden said. "These steps are temporary, but they remain in place until full service is fully restored."

Operators shut the pipeline network on 7 May to stop a ransomware infection from spreading to critical pipeline systems.

Most of Florida receives waterborne fuel supplies, but southeastern states have fewer supply alternatives to the pipeline network. Though federal data showed fairly average fuel inventories for the area heading into the shutdown, the outage sparked panic buying, quickly draining retailers across the region.

The company began restarting the main segments of the network at 5pm ET yesterday.

Despite the restart of the system, ticketing, scheduling and inventory systems across the pipeline remain offline. Colonial was not allowing shippers to change any nominations.

By Elliott Blackburn