Traffic crash shuts down Enbridge pipelines

There’s a disruption in a major crude oil pipeline from the Canadian tar sands in Alberta to the Midwest through Wisconsin. A traffic crash has forced two pipelines to shut down from Superior to Griffith, Ind.

This Enbridge pipeline is important to supply oil refineries in the Midwest. These two lines supply 318,000 barrels of crude oil a day.

Enbridge spokeswoman Lorraine Little says she can’t speculate on what, if any impact, it would have on gas production at other refineries. She says confidentiality agreements don’t allow her to talk about that.

“All I can say is we’re working hard to assess the damage,” she says. “We do believe that we can get line 14 repaired and back up and running by Wednesday night and then 64 would be back up and running sometime during the day on Thursday. There may be some slowdown of some of our lines coming into Superior in order to hand those volumes but we do expect that to be minimal for Superior.

Wisconsin’s lone refinery, Calumet in Superior, says there won’t be any impact on them since the oil shut-off is downstream.

Refinery Manager Dave Podratz says he doubts there will be any immediate effect on gas prices.

Wisconsin Public Radio can be heard locally on 91.3 KUWS-FM and online at www.wpr.org.

Tags: news, wisconsin, energy, auto