Producer
Colonial Pipeline Company
Operator of the largest US refined products pipeline system (5,500 miles, 2.5 million bpd from Houston TX to Linden NJ). Suffered the DarkSide ransomware attack in May 2021, shutting down operations for 6 days and causing fuel shortages across the US East Coast. Privately owned (Koch Industries, Berkshire Hathaway, Shell, IFM Investors).
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Inputs supplied
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Goods downstream
2
Facilities
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Stories
What they make
1 input Colonial Pipeline Company supplies
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Where it shows up
Goods downstream
Essential goods that depend on something Colonial Pipeline Company makes, pick one to see the full supply chain.
Where they make it
2 facilities
Colonial Pipeline Linden Terminal (Line 1 Terminus) →
USNew Jersey · terminal
Northern terminus of Colonial Pipeline's main lines. Delivers ~2.5 million barrels/day of refined products from Gulf Coast refineries to the Northeast distribution network. Connections to Buckeye and other terminal operators in the NY Harbor area.
Colonial Pipeline — Lines 1 & 2 (Houston TX to Linden NJ) →
USSoutheast / Mid-Atlantic · pipeline infrastructure
Lines 1 (gasoline) and 2 (diesel/jet fuel) run 5,500 miles from Houston TX to Linden NJ; 2.5 million bpd capacity; supplies 45% of East Coast fuel supply. DarkSide ransomware attack May 2021 triggered 6-day shutdown and US emergency declaration.
What else they do
Business segments
The company's full revenue map, where this supply-chain role fits within their broader business.
Refined Products Pipeline (US East Coast Critical Infrastructure)
95%Ownership Structure & DarkSide Ransomware Context
5%
Intelligence
What's known
Sourced claims about this company's role in supply chains, chokepoints, concentration, incidents, dual-use connections.
Did you know2021
Colonial Pipeline's 2021 DarkSide ransomware attack demonstrated that the US East Coast fuel supply — gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel for 50 million people and major airports including JFK, LaGuardia, Dulles, and Reagan National — is carried by a single privately-owned pipeline with no redundant backup route of comparable capacity. When Colonial voluntarily shut down to contain the cyberattack on May 7, 2021, the 6-day outage caused: gasoline shortages across 11 Southeast states; panic buying and hoarding; gas station lines measured in hours; jet fuel constraints forcing flight delays and cancellations; Biden administration declaration of transportation emergency. The attack was by a criminal group (DarkSide, operating from Russia) who received $4.4M in ransom from Colonial. The DOJ later recovered $2.3M by tracing bitcoin wallet movements — the first major successful government cryptocurrency recovery for infrastructure cyberattack ransom.
CISA ↗Origin2024
Colonial Pipeline is owned by a consortium that includes CDPQ (Quebec's public pension fund) and IFM Investors (Australian industry superannuation fund), meaning pension funds — not energy companies — now have majority ownership of the infrastructure carrying ~45% of East Coast fuel supply. This ownership structure raises questions about long-term infrastructure investment incentives.
Wikipedia ↗Chokepoint2021
Colonial Pipeline carries approximately 45% of all fuel consumed on the US East Coast — 2.5 million barrels per day through 5,500 miles of pipeline across 13 states. It directly connects to 7 major airports (ATL, CLT, BNA, RDU, GSO, BWI, IAD) and has supplied the Department of Defense's Defense Fuel Supply Command since 1984. The May 2021 6-day ransomware shutdown triggered a national energy emergency, prompted fuel rationing at Marine Corps bases, and forced the Biden administration to consider tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — exposing just how thin the East Coast fuel buffer is against a single-point infrastructure failure.
NBC News ↗Capacity2021
The Colonial Pipeline attack exposed a critical design flaw in US energy infrastructure: the East Coast is functionally dependent on a single pipeline corridor for 45% of its liquid fuel supply, and that pipeline is privately owned by a Koch-Berkshire consortium with no government equity stake, no government observer on its board, and (prior to 2021) no federal cybersecurity requirements for its IT/OT systems. TSA pipeline cybersecurity directives issued in 2021 and 2022 post-Colonial imposed baseline cybersecurity requirements on critical pipeline operators for the first time. The attack also demonstrated the physical-digital dual nature of pipeline attack surfaces: Colonial's operational technology (OT) systems controlling physical valve and pump operations remained separate from the compromised IT systems, but Colonial shut down OT proactively out of caution — meaning the IT breach, not the OT compromise, caused the physical supply disruption. The pipeline's cybersecurity architecture created the crisis even though the operations systems were never directly compromised.
US Department of Homeland Security / TSA ↗