Does a video show a woman pumping gas into plastic bags at a gas station in May 2021? No, that's not true. The video was filmed at a gas station in Houston in December 2019 -- not amid the gas shortage due to the Colonial Pipeline shutdown following a cyberattack in May 2021.
The claim appeared as a Facebook post (archived here) on May 11, 2021. It opened:
Lord Jesus, Gas Shortage, she gonna get us all blowed up trying to put gas in a Bag! I can't stop laughing
This is what the post looked like on Facebook on May 12, 2021:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed May 12 18:20:30 2021 UTC)
The video was filmed by another customer at a Kroger gas station in Houston in December 2019. British tabloid the Daily Mail published it with an article, "What a fuel! Woman pumps gas into a plastic BAG and then puts it into the trunk of her car," on December 12, 2019.
This was not filmed in May 2021 amid the gas shortage in the United States. A cyberattack halted fuel movement through the Colonial Pipeline, which shifts gas from refineries in Texas to distribution centers on the East Coast, according to the U.S. Energy Information System. Colonial Pipeline shut down distribution on May 7, 2021, following the cyberattack. This caused the fuel shortages on the East Coast of the United States.
As old videos and photos of gasoline in plastic bags surface, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission tweeted a warning about filling plastic bags with gasoline on May 12, 2021.
Do not fill plastic bags with gasoline.
-- US Consumer Product Safety Commission (@USCPSC) May 12, 2021
Lead Stories previously debunked the claim that a photograph showed plastic garbage bags filled with gas in a car trunk amid the gas shortage here and the claim that the Keystone Pipeline is closed and is causing the gas shortage on the East Coast here.
