By Stephanie Kelly

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The top U.S. fuel pipeline operator said its lines were fully operational on Monday, but it will take some time for supplies to recover fully from a cyberattack that left thousands of gas stations without fuel.

Last week’s closure of Colonial Pipeline’s 5,500-mile (8,900-km) system was the most disruptive cyberattack on record, preventing millions of barrels of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from flowing to the East Coast from the Gulf Coast. Colonial was fully operational on Monday and was transporting fuel at normal levals, the company said.

On Monday, 11,667 gas stations were without fuel, down from a peak last week of more than 15,000 stations, according to tracking firm GasBuddy. Fuel prices spiked across the southeast, with smaller increases further north.

The ransomware attack came just ahead of the Memorial Day holiday weekend at the end of May, the traditional start of peak-demand summer driving season.

The Southeast bore the brunt of the outage, as the region is almost entirely without refineries. Panic buying caused 90% of fuel stations in Washington, D.C., to run out; as of Monday, that figure had dropped to 69%. Outages in North Carolina fell to about 50%, while outages in South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia were under 50%, GasBuddy said.

The national gas price on Monday rose to $3.045 a gallon, the highest since October 2014, according to data from the American Automobile Association.

“The Southeast will continue to experience tight supply this week as terminals and gas stations are refueled,” said AAA spokesperson Jeanette McGee. “Over the weekend, gas prices started to stabilize, but are expected to fluctuate in the lead up to Memorial Day weekend.”

North Carolina saw an average price increase of 20 cents per gallon from the previous week, according to GasBuddy.

South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia all saw price increases of just under 20 cents per gallon.

Graphic: Gasoline prices surge after Colonial Pipeline attack, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/jznpnrqbzpl/Pasted%20image%201621268272157.png

Some drivers in the region canceled trips. Traffic congestion in cities such as Richmond, Virginia; Atlanta; Greenville, South Carolina, and Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, fell last week from the prior week prior, according to Carol Hansen at location technology company TomTom.

Alpharetta, Georgia-based Colonial is currently shipping at normal rates, though it will take some time for the supply chain to catch up, Colonial spokesman Eric Abercrombie said in an email over the weekend.

The company began resuming its regular nomination process on Monday to allocate capacity to companies that use the line.

DarkSide, the group blamed for attacking Colonial Pipeline systems, has said it recently hacked four other companies. A website it used to communicate went dark last week.

Websites tied to two other ransomware groups not connected to the Colonial hack also were unreachable in a likely retreat amid the hunt for perpetrators, Allan Liska, a researcher with cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, said on Sunday.

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Dan Grebler)

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