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The nation's largest oil pipeline, the Colonial Pipeline system, was shut down on Monday following an explosion that occurred during maintenance:
Colonial Pipeline Co shut down its main gasoline and distillates pipelines on Monday after an explosion and fire in Shelby, Alabama, that injured seven workers - the second time in two months it had to close the crucial supply line to the U.S. East Coast. A nine-man crew was conducting work on the Colonial pipeline system at the time of the explosion, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley told a briefing. Seven of the crew members were injured, with two evacuated by air. Four victims of the blast were taken to the UAB hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, hospital spokesman Adam Pope said.
A segment of pipeline was undergoing maintenance on Monday afternoon when it exploded. The fire had been contained as of around 9 p.m. (0100 GMT on Tuesday), according to local media reports.
Gasoline futures jumped as much as 15%:
December-delivery gasoline rose as much as 21.56 cents to $1.6351 a gallon in intraday trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after the blast. The contract traded at $1.5675 at 9:03 a.m. in Singapore. The intraday peak was the highest for a front-month contract since June 2, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
[...] A spill in September closed Colonial for 12 days, cutting supplies to 50 million Americans in the Southeast. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley said in a tweet that the incident in Shelby County on Monday was about a mile west of the Sept. 9 incident. Colonial had planned to remove between late-October and mid-November a temporary bypass pipeline that was built around the site of the earlier spill.
Also reported at NBC, Huffington Post, and the Chicago Tribune.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday November 01 2016, @08:09PM
More details at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents_in_the_United_States_in_the_21st_century [wikipedia.org]
I was gonna suggest nine men means pig operations gone wild, but apparently a track hoe slid into the main line and smashed the main line open and blew it all up. For you city slickers a track hoe is not a female cross country runner with loose (fun) morals, but the machine that kids call diggers or some adults call excavators or whatever. The steel bucket shovel on the end of an arm attached to a tank chassis.
Probably trying to fix soil erosion around the pipeline and the water that washed away the soil to begin with made it slippery and the track hoe probably slid into the pipe and crack at a flange joint and boom.
At a former employer, the guys doing pipeline work seemed to almost use a metal detector to find and rip out as much of our fiber as they could for fun. They seem to spend a lot of time on erosion control. Or maybe the service contract limited damages to us if that was the cause "act of god" as in soil erosion who knows.
(Score: 5, Funny) by sjames on Tuesday November 01 2016, @09:20PM
That's why you should always carry a couple feet of fiber in your pocket. If you get stranded in the middle of nowhere just bury the fiber. When the guy comes along to dig it up and break it, you can get a lift home.