Energy Secretary: Gas Shortage Not a 'Shortage' But a 'Crunch'

The White House House argued Tuesday the United States was not experiencing a gas shortage after the Colonial ransomware attack, but a “crunch.”

“We know that we have gasoline, we just need to get it to the right places,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Tuesday at the White House.

Granholm and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appeared at the daily White House press briefing on Tuesday to reassure Americans that the gas shortage was not actually a gas shortage.

“It’s not that we have a gasoline shortage, its that we have a supply crunch,” Granholm said.

Colonial runs 5,500 miles of pipeline that delivers as many as 50 percent of gasoline to the East Coast.

Although Colonial shut down their systems on Friday, the White House said Monday that there were no shortages, even though residents of North and South Carolina were already experiencing them.

Granholm could not predict when the “crunch” would be over but reiterated that Colonial said the pipeline would return “substantially” to service at the end of the week and urged Americans not to horde gasoline.

“Let me emphasize that much as there was no cause for, say, hoarding toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic, there should be no cause for hoarding gasoline,” she said. “Especially in light of the fact that the pipeline should be substantially operational by the end of this week and over the weekend.”