Like this is good news - oil department
From
Yahoo/Reuters:
Fire shuts key Canada-U.S. pipeline
An explosion crippled the main pipeline supplying Canadian crude to U.S. Midwest refineries on Wednesday, forcing operator Enbridge to halt nearly a fifth of U.S. imports and sending crude prices as much as $4 higher.
One of the set of four lines will require repairs and regulator inspections, while the largest is "not likely" to start up any time soon, Larry Springer, a spokesman for Calgary, Alberta-based operator Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO), said on Thursday.
The smaller two lines were several hundred feet from the fire and appear to be undamaged, but will be inspected soon before they are restarted, Springer said by phone. He was not able to give a specific time frame for restarting any of the network.
Two employees were killed in the blast and fire on the 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) Line 3, which had been shut earlier to inspect a leak, Springer added. Enbridge said in statement that the cause of the explosion had not yet been determined.
The explosion about 3.0 miles southeast of its Clearbrook, Minnesota, terminal, shut down a line that carries an estimated 1.9 million bpd of Canadian crude, equivalent to about 9 percent of total U.S. oil demand.
9% is not chump change. And the winter price bump was just starting to settle out too... Each winter, prices go up as refineries gear up to produce more fuel oil for heating. Not having been able to build any additional refineries for the last thirty years (thanks environmentalists!) has exacerbated this problem. The most recent sharp spike was traceable to speculation.
Crap -- now they aren't even letting us grease up before we have to bend over...
Posted by DaveH at November 29, 2007 8:18 PM