Just as the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be loosening, a gas crisis took the Southeast parts of America by storm. The idea of a gas shortage in North America is quite unfathomable considering gas prices usually spike according to scarcity but rarely do vehicle owners and drivers hear of severe gas shortage.

The following is the 2021 gas crisis explained:

Khamkéo Vilaysing

Why Was There A Gas Shortage?

A Colonial Pipeline on the East Coast was a casualty of a cyberattack and completely shut down. Many gas stations in the surrounding area fell victim to attack, causing extreme gas lines, hoarding and even violent exchanges as customers tried to secure enough gas for their vehicles.

According to experts, the hack exposed holes in the U.S defences, although these faults were not just discovered, rather were known for years. American critical infrastructure is majorly owned by private companies and thus governed by very few standardized regulations set in stone to secure computer networks.

Criminal hackers are usually by hostile foreign governments and, as a result, aren't restricted by American law enforcement. Federal agencies are not tasked with defending Americans against public hackers instead the U.S government leaves the private sector to defend itself.

Jonathan Kemper

In states like Georgia, North and South Carolina and, Virginia, gas prices skyrocketed to 6.99 per gallon where some stations completely ran out of certain kinds of fuel. The Biden Administration quickly assured Americans that the gas shortage was under raps and would come to pass shortly, but that didn't stop people from panic buying.

It got so bad, that The Consumer Product Safety Commission had to remind folks to not fill plastic bags with gas.

Thankfully, private sectors worked to fix the Colonial Pipeline issue and get it up and running in a little over a week. Let's hope it won't be hacked again anytime soon.