Producer

Colonial Pipeline Company

HQ US · Georgiawebsite ↗

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

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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.

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
  • 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
  • Chokepoint2023

    Colonial Pipeline supplies approximately 45% of all East Coast fuel via its 5,500-mile pipeline from Houston to Linden, NJ. The 2021 ransomware attack by DarkSide shut down operations for 6 days (May 7–15), causing gasoline shortages across 17 states and requiring a presidential emergency declaration — demonstrating that a single pipeline operator is a critical national security chokepoint for Northeast heating oil.

    Wikipedia