Colonial pipeline causing no gas shortage in Mississippi but experts say ‘panic buying’ and ‘hysteria’ creates gaps in the supply chain

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Mississippi leaders want residents to know that there is no gas shortage in the state because of the Colonial pipeline cyberattack.

In fact, they say acting like there is one can actually make things worse.

“There’s plenty of fuel,” said Matt Bogue, vice president of the Columbus-based Dutch Oil Company. “Unfortunately, right now it’s in everybody’s driveway in their garage instead of available for the next customer.”

Governor Tate Reeves and Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce Andy Gipson both released statements Tuesday saying that the attack that has created long gas lines on the east coast is not behind any such problems in Mississippi.

“There is fuel available,” Bogue says. “It’s just when everybody’s buying it at the same time due to hysteria, then it creates gaps in the supply chain and that’s just what you’re seeing here.”

Bogue describes the situation as a supply crunch, with the demand driven by people choosing to “panic buy” more gas than they need to.

Governor Reeves says the Colonial pipeline supplies under 30 percent of the fuel in Mississippi and Bouge says even less than that goes to the roughly 100 stations Dutch Oil owns across North Central Mississippi and Western Alabama.

“There’s a refinery in Tuscaloosa that supplies fuel that’s not dependent upon Colonial, there is a barge supply terminal in Aberdeen, there’s barge supply terminal in Memphis,” he said.

At the time of the interview, Bogue told WCBI that the Shell station he was standing next to on Alabama Street had over 10,000 gallons of regular gas.

But the concern has driven plenty of Columbus residents to the pump

“Seen a lot of people out at the gas station today but I kind of got mine early,” said Columbus resident Samella Degraffenreid.

Degraffenreid says she only bought enough gas to fill up her lawnmower and her small car.

“I’m just buying what I need. Nothing more,” she said.

Bouge says that’s the example everyone in Mississippi should follow.

“If you need gas, it’s going to be available for you. If you don’t need gas, don’t go fill up every five-gallon bucket that you got. Don’t go fill up big canisters of fuel. Just be smart with it.”

Bogue told WCBI that while there have been some cases of short-lived outages at their stores, they always have trucks on the way to fill them back up within a few hours.