Pipeline accident disrupts gasoline flow to Las Vegas

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 | 11:09 a.m.

Local service stations should receive deliveries today of gasoline to ease a temporary shortage caused by a hole in a pipeline that delivers fuel from Southern California to Las Vegas.

An accident caused the damage to the pipeline about 8 p.m. Friday, said Rick Rainey, spokesman for Kinder Morgan, the company that owns the pipeline. The pipeline runs 275 miles from Colton, Calif., to Las Vegas and moves about 128,000 gallons of gasoline, jet and diesel fuel every day.

"It was hit by heavy machinery, mostly likely a backhoe," Rainey said.

A small amount of jet fuel leaked from the hole left in the pipeline into a ditch, Rainey said. The entire pipeline had to be shut down while the leak was cleaned up, leaving an unknown number of gas stations in the Las Vegas Valley without fuel overnight and early this morning.

The accident took place in Santa Fe Springs, an industrial area about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles, Rainey said.

The pipeline was operating again about midnight this morning, and trucks with gasoline were leaving the area and on their way to Las Vegas by about 2 a.m., he said.

One local gas station employee wondered whether the rush to supply stations that were left without gasoline in the last 24 hours might not push back other orders.

"We're supposed to get a delivery tonight, but maybe it will be delayed," said Gina Miller, assistant manager for a Texaco station on Smoke Ranch Road and Rainbow Boulevard.

Rainey said a similar accident had never occurred to that stretch of pipeline, and that the system is monitored around the clock to respond to accidents.