Fuel supplies slowly getting back to normal along Outer Banks

Lines at the Exxon at N.C. 12 and Ocean Bay Blvd in Kill Devil Hills on Friday, May 14, 2021. [Courtesy Kill Devil Hills police]

Fuel inventories are getting back closer to normal following the wave of panic buying last week spurred by the cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline.

But stations throughout North Carolina were still having trouble keeping up with demand, with GasBuddy.com’s availability tracker reporting 42 percent of the stations statewide had fuel available as of Sunday evening.

Lines have been much shorter over the weekend, while reports to Gas Buddy showed around half the stations on the Outer Banks and the mainland were still either out or had limited fuel available.

Officials with the pipeline that runs from the Gulf Coast to New York and supplies about half of the gasoline to the East Coast was back to normal operations Friday.

Gas Buddy’s chief analyst Patrick DeHaan said Sunday it could “take weeks for full restoration” of all grades of motor fuel are available at every station.

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Sam Walker was news director for OBXToday.com, Beach 104, 99.1 The Sound, Big 94.5 WCMS and Z 92.3 from August 2011 to March 2022.