An explosion rocked a portion of Colorado Interstate Gas Co.’s (CIG) mainline in Colorado on March 23, but it did not interrupt natural gas deliveries to the region or cause any injuries, according to the pipeline. On Friday, a spokesman for El Paso Corp., which owns CIG, said repairs on the damaged section of the pipeline had been completed, and the company was awaiting clearance from the federal Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) to begin flowing gas through the affected line.

A spokesman for the OPS in Washington, DC, said the pipeline incident still was under investigation. “Just because they’ve fixed the pipe doesn’t mean they’ve assessed the cause,” he told NGI Friday.

The rupture, which resulted in a fire, occurred at about 7:30 p.m. (Mountain Standard Time) on a 24-inch diameter segment of the pipeline located east of Fort Collins, CO, in Weld County, an El Paso spokesman noted. Customer service apparently was unaffected as deliveries were re-routed around the impacted area.

Three homes were immediately evacuated, with one of the houses sustaining damage to its vinyl siding and windows, he said. “It’s too early to speculate” on damage estimates to the pipeline and house.

Late Friday, El Paso said it was still looking into the cause of the failure.

The pipeline was cooperating with federal agencies, the spokesman reported, adding that the OPS Western Region was involved. The latest failure comes 2 1/2 years after the explosion on the El Paso Natural Gas system in New Mexico, which killed 12 members of an extended family. The National Transportation Safety Board said severe corrosion was to blame.

In an informational posting on CIG’s web site, shippers on both CIG and its sister pipeline, Wyoming Interstate Co., were informed that the rupture, which occurred between the Cheyenne Station and Watkins Station, “will have no impact on scheduled quantities” for the flow days immediately following the explosion.

The pipeline segment on which the accident occurred has an operating capacity of 690 MMcf/d, but volumes of only 416.8 MMcf/d were scheduled through it, according a pipeline notice.

The 4,600-mile CIG pipeline provides average gas deliveries of 1.4 Bcf/d to customers in Colorado and Wyoming. It is connected to key production areas in the Rocky Mountains, Texas Panhandle, western Oklahoma, western Kansas and Wyoming.

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