Posted on 11/28/2007 8:35:18 PM PST by Flavius
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO) has shut down four of its main pipelines that supply over 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of Canadian oil to the U.S. Midwest due to an explosion and a fire in Minnesota, the company said on Wednesday.
The Calgary, Alberta-based company said all Enbridge pipelines in the vicinity of its Clearbrook, Minnesota, terminal -- Lines 1, 2, 3, and 4 -- were immediately shut down and isolated and emergency crews dispatched to the site of the fire.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Could be nothing. Then again, who hates the US enough to blow up pipelines and hurt the US economy?
Suspicious. If it were natural gas, it could explode maybe. But does crude oil explode? I don’t think so.
It could still be an accident of some sort, but it seems suspicious to me, on the face of it.
$4.00 gallon gas?
Here we go again. I notice there are no pictures of massive flames. But gas prices have fallen in the last few days. And oil prices fell in the last couple of days also. So I expect we will see more items like this over the next few weeks. Tomorrow they will report an oil rig on fire or a couple of oil tankers leaking. All without any pictures or proof. Go MSM Go. I for one don’t believe.
Oh that’s just great.......
Should have filled up the vehicles today.
Just in time. Oil was getting down close to $90.
No idea what happened, but there is no doubt it will be either an accident or a careless cause reported eventually.
Apparently, they’d been working on the line for the past few weeks due to leaking crude. When they finished and pressurized the line, crude started spraying out and it caught on fire. It then spread and/or exploded.
Maybe a leak in the pipe caused the oil to spray out in a fine mist, and coincidentally, the cold air and heaps of metal contributed a spark forming, causing said explosion...
Of course, given how we've heard rumors and allegations about how terrorists were targeting our energy infrastructure, primarily oil, in what would be an attempt to push our economy into a recession... Well, it isn't that difficult to entertain the possibility that the "accident" had a little help.
Also, one of my more paranoid ideas is that an American liberal would arrange for such "accidents" with the hope that a recession would force our nation into the necessary crisis to end the war in Iraq, and elect Democrats to both elected branches.
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A fire burning at the Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO: Quote) oil terminal in Minnesota that has shut down most of the main pipeline that delivers Canadian crude to U.S. Midwest refineries may burn for three days, a county official said on Thursday.
“The area under fire now is 100 feet by 100 feet, it is anticipated to burn for up to three days,” Jeanine Brand, County Attorney and Public Information Officer for Clearwater County, where the explosion occurred, told Reuters by phone.
“Apparently, there was an oil leak within the last couple of weeks, crews were around when they finished, and they pressured the pipeline, and crude started spilling from the pipeline, oil sprayed and created an oil spill.”
Just so you know, I don’t listen much to my paranoid voices in my head. I just like to entertain these ideas as distant possibilities as a matter of playing out scenarios.
Refineries, coal carrying trains derail, now we get a broken gas pipeline from CAN’TADA. Have you seen this rash of accidents lately around energy supplies? Terorism on Americans in America. We need coastwatchers, border safety, and real ID’s that can’t be reproduced. Deportation of all mulims until they condemn these attacks.
Katie Couric?
Well, as I indicated, it was speculative.
There is considerable evidence that if there IS a terrorist incident, the FBI has often tried to cover it up. The Salt Lake City Mall shootings. The Norman Oklahoma suicide bombing. TWA 800. So even after the details emerge, you seldom have absolute certainty.
Accidents happen, and given enough time unusual accidents can happen. I like to keep an open mind. Paranoid speculation can help to do that, as long as you don’t give in to them uncritically and as long as you understand that you are probably being premature in bringing up the possibility.
They should be RFID chip’d to keep tabs on them.
The one in the middle seems to have his eyes on one particular plane.
Has anyone ever figured out why that is? Especially when other "threats" get a huge amount of publicity, then turn out to be nothing. I still remember the "summer of terror" we were supposed to have a couple of years ago. The FBI and The Justice Department told me so. Are these guys incompetent, or what?
http://wcco.com/local/pipeline.explosion.northern.2.598268.html
That’s Gustav, keep an eye on that guy......
This is going to leave a very large carbon footprint!
I used to work for the line that recieves from that station and then sends south to the Cities. That place is in the middle of no where.
It’s always something. Let’s just stop the incrementalism, raise the price to $10 a gallon, and ruin our economy. Natural gas, $500 a month per household. We’ll all stay home from our jobs and freeze. I’m sick of it.
Ummmm, it'll "explode" if someone put a bomb under it... other than that, it probably just burns.
Sending a ‘pig’ through the line to check it before ‘restart’ might have caused a spark?
Because if the American people knew and believed with absolute certainty that Islam was responsible for all of those things, Mecca and Medina would be glass parking lots already, because the American people would storm the missile bases and make the military fire on the center of Islam...
Just like if the American people believed it was International Communism (Castro/Khrushchev) responsible for Kennedy’s assassination, there would have been all out war...
I’ve been to Leach Lake a couple of times. Very nice country.
Clearwater seems to be west of lake country.
Just farms and forests, eh?
The pipeline in Bellingham, WA exploded, killing two young boys who were playing with fireworks. The pipeline had been damaged by construction and went undetected for who knows how long. The product leaked into a creek, the kids went down to the creek to set off illegal fire works and.....
It was horrible.
You took the words right out of my mouth. One excuse after another to jack up energy prices.
What better place for some underhanded dog and pony show than Boondocks, MN to stage the next act?
and lakes :)
Energy dependence ensures sustained high prices and a recession. And it will also buy us communism in ‘08. It’s sad.
Kinda funny how we have -just- enough to keep the pumps open.
That’s why I think there is some merit to the notion of price and supply manipulation in the energy markets.
Oil was down $3.00 today, now this. Anybody wanna bet on tomorrows’ action?
If you have ever taken a spray of WD40 (mineral oil) to a candle you get an idea of how volatile this stuff can be under pressure.
So, ya, it can - and does - explode.
Secondly, there have been some spot shortages of late. Diesel was in very short supply in North Dakota as recently as this past month.
The U.S. has so far avoided widespread shortages, but arguably avoided a very serious gasoline shortage last summer by a very narrow margin. The system requires a minimum operating level of each refined product and crude. When inventories drop below that level, things can get ugly quite rapidly as consumers top off tanks and aggravate minor shortages.
The market will appear normal until the stress becomes apparent to a significant number of consumers. At that point -- watch out. Last summer, while gasoline inventories were low for the U.S. as a whole, the national numbers did not really tell the whole story. The West Coast was relatively well supplied but the East Coast was very close to that minimum operating level. The good news is that we dodged that bullet. The bad news is that we will need a decent product build going into next summer or with hoarding / panic buying some of us may walking when we would much prefer to drive.
Happened on the same day crude drops $4/BBL too.
russians?
only one of the four lines is involved,
or is it worse than that?
See tag line for my comment. : )
4 lines shut down.
http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=2007-11-29T035955Z_01_N28652705_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESS-ENBRIDGE-FIRE-DC.XML
Possibly of interest to you.
Yes, we looked at it today.
The cause is a leak (just read a new article), but I haven’t seen yet (on the internet) whether the leak was natural or manmade.
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