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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

The nation's largest oil pipeline, the Colonial Pipeline [wikipedia.org] system, was shut down on Monday following an explosion that occurred during maintenance [reuters.com]:

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% [bloomberg.com]:

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.

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