Fuel – The Pipelines, Tankers and Trucks That Move Refined Products to the Lower Half of PADD 1

There’s a staggeringly large disconnect between the vast volumes of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel consumed within the six states in EIA’s PADD 1C subregion — Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia — and the truly paltry amounts of transportation fuels produced there. That dichotomy spurred a multi-decade buildout of what are now highly efficient pipeline, marine and trucking networks that now deliver about 1.3 MMb/d of refined products to what EIA refers to as the “Lower Atlantic” states. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss these networks and explain how they keep the region running.

The half-dozen states in PADD 1C have a combined population of more than 60 million and a GDP of more than $4 trillion. That puts the Lower Atlantic region on par with the U.K. or France or Italy — in other words, a real economic powerhouse. But PADD 1C has only one small refinery within its borders, a 23-Mb/d facility at the northern tip of West Virginia’s panhandle that focuses on lubricant production and markets virtually all of its modest gasoline and diesel output very locally. That’s a roundabout way of saying that the region needs to pipe, truck, tanker or barge in more than 99.9% of the gasoline and diesel it consumes, as well as literally every drop of jet fuel. (Ergon Refining’s Newell, WV, refinery doesn't typically make any “jet,” as the refined, kerosene-based fuel is commonly referred to.)

As we said in the introduction, the volumes that need to be hauled in are significant. Florida is the #3 consumer of gasoline in the U.S., behind only California and Texas, and Georgia (#5), North Carolina (#6) and Virginia (#11) aren’t far behind. It’s a similar story for diesel, with Florida trailing only Texas and California (in that order), and as for jet fuel, Florida — a top tourist destination with a slew of busy airports — is #2, bested only by California. (Ironically, as you’ll see, Florida is the only state in PADD 1C that depends almost entirely on barged-in and trucked-in volumes of refined products — its portfolio of pipelines is very limited.)

The vast majority of the refined products consumed in the Lower Atlantic states are produced at refineries in Texas and Louisiana and piped through the spine of PADD 1C through two pipeline systems: the Colonial Pipeline and the Products (SE) Pipeline, the latter of which used to be called the Plantation Pipeline. (Note: The latest edition of our Future of Fuels report, coming out in just a few days, provides a detailed forecast for how PADD-to-PADD movements are expected to change on an annualized basis out to 2050.)

The 2.5-MMb/d Colonial Pipeline, which started operating in 1963, is a roughly 5,500-mile system whose main route (dark-blue line in Figure 1 below) runs from Houston to Linden, NJ, and has several spurs or laterals (light-blue lines) that pipe fuel to key consumption areas. The main route consists of four distinct pipeline sections: two pipes from Houston to Greensboro, NC, and two pipes from Greensboro north — one that runs to the Baltimore area and another that terminates in northern New Jersey. Since July 2025, Colonial has been owned by Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, which paid previous co-owners KKR, Koch Industries, CDPQ (Quebec’s largest pension fund), Shell Midstream, and IFM Investors $9 billion for the massive asset.