The US capital is running out of petrol even as the country's largest fuel pipeline network ramped up deliveries following a cyberattack and officials assured motorists that supplies would return to normal soon.
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The six-day Colonial Pipeline shutdown was the most disruptive cyberattack on record, demonstrating how vulnerable vital US infrastructure is to cybercriminals.
Widespread panic-buying continued two days after the pipeline network restarted, leaving filling stations across the US southeast out of petrol even in areas far from the pipeline.
US pump prices are at their highest in years, two weeks before the peak summer driving season kicks off, with traffic growing after the pandemic.
The average US petrol price has climbed to almost $US3.04, the most expensive since October 2014, the American Automobile Association said.
On Friday petrol station outages in Washington DC climbed to 87 per cent, from 79 per cent the day before, tracking firm GasBuddy said.
US President Joe Biden assured motorists supplies should start returning to normal by this weekend.
"Most of these states/areas with outages have continued to see panicked buying, which is likely a contributing factor to the slow-ish recovery thus far," GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan said.
"It will take a few weeks."
Colonial Pipeline announced late on Thursday it had restarted its entire pipeline system linking refineries on the Gulf Coast to markets along the eastern seaboard.
Some states experienced modest improvements but still had a lot of petrol outages.
About 70 per cent of service stations in North Carolina were without fuel, with outages in about 50 per cent of stations in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia.
The hacking group believed responsible for the attack, DarkSide, said it had hacked four other companies including a Toshiba subsidiary in Germany.
Colonial Pipeline, owned by pension funds, private equity and energy firms, has not determined how the initial breach occurred, a spokeswoman said on Thursday.
The company has focused on cleaning its networks, restoring data and reopening the pipeline.
Colonial has not disclosed how much money the hackers were seeking or whether it paid.
Bloomberg News reported that it paid nearly $US5 million ($A6.4 million) to hackers.
Australian Associated Press
