Colonial pipeline may return fully by end of week: Colonial

London, (Quantum Commodity Intelligence) - The main artery taking ground transport and aviation fuels from Texan refineries to the populous east coast on the US may fully restart by the end of the week after the pipeline had to be taken offline over the weekend after a cyberattack.

Colonial Pipeline, which owns the network of the same name, said in a statement Monday that it was restarting its systems in a "stepwise fashion" that will take time, but hopefully that most operations would be running by Friday.

"This plan is based on a number of factors with safety and compliance driving our operational decisions, and the goal of substantially restoring operational service by the end of the week," the company said in a release.

Colonial said it would monitor inventory in storage tanks and will work with shippers to move refined products such as diesel, gasoline and jet fuel to terminals for local delivery.

The pipeline delivers almost half of all road and aviation transport fuel demand to the US East Coast.

On Friday, the company said it was the victim of a cybersecurity attack involving ransomware and had to take certain systems offline and temporarily halt all pipeline operations to mitigate the threat.

On Monday gasoline futures soared to multi-year highs, forcing the Biden administration to step in and temporarily repeal regulations that limit the transportation by road of diesel, gasoline and jet kero.

By the end of the day, RBOB futures had lost all their earlier made gains.

Colonial's pipeline transports 2.5 million barrels each day, taking refined gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel from the Gulf Coast up to New York Harbor and New York's major airports.