AP News, November 30th, 2007
An oil pipeline explosion that killed two workers and caused a spike in oil prices can be traced back to a pinhole leak first repaired three weeks ago, the company said.
The fire was extinguished Thursday morning, and oil prices ended the day just slightly higher after it became clear that the Enbridge Energy pipeline would come back on line quickly.
Enbridge spokesman Larry Springer said Friday that workers were trying to remove leaked oil from around the pipeline. Once that's done it can be repaired.
He said the company still hoped to have the pipeline fixed within a few days, and that it was running at 80 percent of capacity in the meantime.
The pinhole leak was fixed with a repair sleeve earlier this month.
On Wednesday, workers shut down the pipeline to remove the 11-foot section that included the pinhole and sleeve. They replaced it with a new section of pipeline, but oil apparently leaked at a section where that joined the old line, said Leon Zupan, Enbridge's vice president of operations.
The killed workers were identified by Enbridge on Thursday as Dave Mussati Jr. and Steve Arnovich, both contract workers from its Superior, Wis., office.
Houston-based Enbridge Energy Inc.'s pipeline carries crude oil from Saskatchewan to the Chicago area. The area where the fire occurred, Clearbrook, is about 215 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
It carries roughly 16 percent of U.S. crude imports, and oil prices shot up more than $4 early Thursday when word of the fire first reached oil markets. But three of the four lines were operating by that afternoon. The company said the fourth line, where the fire occurred, would probably be usable again in two or three days.
The crude is used to make several kinds of fuel, such as gasoline and home heating oil.
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AP Business Writers Joshua Freed in Minneapolis and John Wilen in New York contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
http://www.enbridge.com/
