Pipeline that sends fuel to LV restarted

Christina Littlefield and Dan Kulin

Friday, Oct. 22, 2004 | 11:13 a.m.

Two pipelines that send fuel from Southern California to Las Vegas and Phoenix are up and running again, averting fears of a gasoline shortage in the Las Vegas Valley and a possible increase in gasoline prices, officials at Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, the pipeline owners, announced Thursday.

Workers restarted the pipeline that sends fuel to Las Vegas at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and had the pipeline to Phoenix back in operation at 3 a.m. today, spokesman Rick Rainey said. Severe weather forced officials to shut down both pipelines Wednesday morning.

The quicker-than-expected repair time means that there will be no gasoline shortages in Las Vegas because of the downed pipelines, Rainey said. Kinder Morgan officials had feared there might be outages to the company's Las Vegas and Barstow, Calif., terminals.

"From a supply standpoint we are running normally," Rainey said.

Nevada fuel experts said the pipelines would have had to have been down for five to eight days before local residents would have seen an increase at the pump. The pipelines usually run on a cycle that includes planned stoppages for regular maintenance, so a buffer is built into the transportation system, the experts said.

"They never got to a point where there was actually any kind of a shortage, so we don't expect there to be any kind of price reflection," said Jim Walker, energy reliability program manager with Gov. Kenny Guinn's office of energy.

"They actually got the pipelines up and running faster than expected, so everything worked out really well."

Gasoline prices hit a record high of $2.29 for regular unleaded in Las Vegas Wednesday, the day the pipelines were closed, but AAA Nevada spokesman Michael Geeser said that was due to other market factors.

"It's nearly impossible to hit a price that quickly" from a shutdown, Geeser said, noting that gasoline prices eased up from then until today. The average price for unleaded was $2.288 this morning, Geeser said.

Diesel prices did increase slightly between Thursday and today, Geeser said, from $2.337 a gallon to $2.344 a gallon. That increase could have been due to the closure, Geeser said.

"It's such a minimal increase that the wind could have blown it that way," Geeser added.

Peter Krueger, director of the Nevada Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, said he expected prices to continue to decrease over the next couple of weeks as supply levels increased.

"(The two-day stoppage) should have no impact one way or another in price, and in the longer term, even in the next week, we should see the street price come down off some of these record levels we have been seeing," Krueger said. "There's lots of refined product in the system and they have got to get rid of it."

Heavy rains played a role in the Wednesday closure of both a 16-inch pipeline and a second 20-inch pipeline near Fontana, Calif.

The 16-inch pipeline, which carries fuel that eventually reaches Las Vegas, is an underground line that was exposed when the rain washed away soil around part of the pipeline, Rainey said.

Rain-induced erosion near the 20-inch pipe caused a Union Pacific Railroad train to derail. Two box cars and a tanker filled with chlorine gas toppled onto the ground above the buried pipelines. Kinder Morgan workers had to remove gasoline from the pipeline before they could safely move the trains and check the pipeline for damage, Rainey said.

Both pipelines feed into the company's terminal in Colton, Calif., which then transfer gasoline to Las Vegas and Phoenix. There was no damage to either pipeline, Rainey said.