An explosion rocked a portion of Colorado Interstate Gas Co.’s mainline in Colorado Sunday evening, but it did not interrupt natural gas deliveries to the region or cause any injuries, a spokesman for the pipeline said Monday.

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, said Mel Scott of El Paso Corp., which owns CIG. Customer service was unaffected as deliveries were re-routed around the impacted area, he told NGI.

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

He noted that El Paso personnel were at the site Monday conducting an investigation into the cause of the failure. Repairs to the pipeline and other facilities would begin “when the investigation is wrapped up,” Scott said, but he was unable to provide a timetable.

The pipeline was cooperating with federal agencies, he reported. The Office of Pipeline Safety’s Western Region was involved, but Scott could not way whether it was at the site. 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 information 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 of March 24 and March 25.

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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