The average price of gasoline in the U.S. rose to $3.008 a gallon Wednesday, the first time gas prices have topped $3 a gallon since 2014, Bloomberg News reports, citing AAA data. The proximate cause of the rise in gas prices is the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline due to a suspected Russian ransomware cyberattack. The pipeline carries 45 percent of all fuel to the East Coast, and news of the pipeline suspension, plus the resulting higher prices, led to gas shortages throughout the Southeast.
"This is our fault," Devin Singer of Wilmington, North Carolina, told The Washington Post. "This whole thing. The people's fault. Same thing with the whole toilet paper shortage. Everybody wants something and nobody has it, so we all freak out and then nobody can get it. It's mass hysteria." Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm essentially agreed with that analysis Tuesday evening and asked Americans to stop "hoarding gasoline."
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