The offshore Destin Pipeline shut in about 600 MMcf/d of gasthat was flowing on its system Sunday but is expected to resumeflows sometime today pending repairs to a liquids pipelinedownstream of the Pascagoula gas processing plant.

Williams Field Services, NGL Pipeline Co. reported that itsTri-States Pipeline experienced a leak in southern Mississippi nearthe town of Kiln on Sunday. Tri-States is a 168-mile pipe thattransports natural gas liquids, such as ethane, propane and butane,from the Gulf Coast of Alabama and Mississippi into Louisiana. Aseven-mile segment of the 16-inch diameter pipe was isolated and isbeing repaired. Once the product has been removed, personnel willbegin excavation and repairs. The cause of the leak was not knownyesterday, Williams said. No injuries were reported, but 50 localresidents were evacuated as a precaution.

The shutdown of the liquids line forced BP Amoco to haltprocessing operations at its Pascagoula Gas Plant, which in turnforced Destin, which serves the deepwater Gulf, to declare a forcemajeure until further notice.

“From what I understand they removed a huge ice ball and arehaving to run a pig with nitrogen to get all the liquid out of theline before they can even excavate,” said Destin spokesman RandyLenard. “The last I heard they said they should be back up by aboutnoon [today]. We’ve got 600 MMcf/d shut in on the Destin system butabout 140 MMcf/d of that is off of the Viosca Knoll system, whichcan go to Southern Natural.” The pipeline has maximum capacity of1 Bcf/d but has been averaging 600 MMcf/d of throughput recently.

For more information on the Destin shut-in, call Destin’s gascontrol room at (713) 230-1820.

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