Gas refiners Valero (VLO  ) and Citgo have been granted waivers to negate the Jones Act temporarily. The decision by the United States federal government is intended to allow the refiners to transport gas supplies more quickly.

The price many Americans are paying at the pump for gas could have been much higher had the U.S. Federal Government not decided to exempt the two gas firms from the Jones Act. The Jones Act, or the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, was intended to ensure that the United States would always have a proper merchant marine. As a product of its time, the Jones Act contains protectionist policies requiring all vessels traveling between domestic ports to be made in the U.S. and crewed entirely by U.S. sailors.

The first waiver was granted to Valero on Thursday, while the second was given to Citgo the next day. The waivers will allow the two firms to charter foreign vessels to transport fuel between affected areas on the U.S. East Coast, helping to alleviate both material shortages and public panic. The waivers came at a crucial time, with 88% of Washington DC area stations reporting being without fuel on Friday.

The use of Jones Act defying vessels will likely only continue into the short term future, thanks to a resumption of operations by Colonial Pipeline. Beginning with a hack earlier this week, Colonial Pipeline has spent much of the last few days attempting to deal with a significant data breach that left servers compromised and an undisclosed amount of data being held for ransom. Colonial Pipeline has since paid said ransom and was given a decryption tool by hackers to restore servers, though the firm would later resort to using its backup files due to the slow sleep of the decryption.