Bison Pipeline was shut in with scheduled volumes from the Buffalo, WY, receipt point cut to zero as of Friday’s gas day due to a rupture of the six-month-old pipeline in Campbell County, WY, and resulting force majeure, the TransCanada Corp. pipeline said in a notice to customers.

According to press reports the incident Wednesday evening could be heard 30 miles away. A TransCanada spokesman said the sound came from the pressure release from the large-diameter pipeline and there was no ignition of gas. The nearest farmhouse is about a mile away.

Brian Jeffries, executive director of the Wyoming Pipeline Authority, said producers would likely not be too inconvenienced by the shut in of Bison.

“I think [producers] will readjust quickly,” Jeffries told NGI. “There’s adequate pipeline capacity out of the Powder River Basin to move the volumes that are being produced. Bison is a relatively new pipeline. All of the gas that was moving before it went into service was moving on other pipelines and it will migrate quickly back to those other pipelines while Bison is out of service.”

Bison said the rupture of the underground pipe is near milepost 16.2 in central Wyoming west of Gillette. Gas flow was stopped by safety systems within 15 minutes of the rupture. No injuries or damage were reported. The cause of the rupture was unknown.

Volumes from the Buffalo receipt point were initially cut by 50% for gas day Thursday.

Wyoming has no direct jurisdiction over the interstate Bison line, which does not deliver gas to end-use customers in the state, but Gov. Matt Mead’s spokesman, Renny MacKay, told NGI that both the state Public Service Commission and Department of Environmental Quality are monitoring the situation. “Repairs are under way according to TransCanada,” MacKay said.

“Investigation of the cause [by federal authorities] is under way, but it will take a couple of weeks to complete,” he said, noting that the governor’s understanding was that a major gas producer supplying the pipeline had “found another way to move the gas out of state until reconstruction is completed.”

Bison entered service on Jan. 14, transporting gas from the Powder River Basin to the Midwest. The pipeline consists of 302 miles of 30-inch diameter pipe and related facilities that extend northeastward from the Dead Horse Region near Gillette through southeastern Montana and southwestern North Dakota where it interconnects with Northern Border Pipeline Co.’s system near that pipeline’s Compressor Station No. 6 in Morton County, ND. Bison’s design capacity is 477 MMcf/d.

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