Car accident shuts major US oil pipeline for days

(hydrocarbonprocessing) -- A major oil pipeline will be shut down for several days after a spill and fire near Chicago caused by a freak car accident. The pipeline was shut down within hours of the accident early Saturday morning and will remain shut down until Thursday morning, an Enbridge spokeswoman said.

A Chevrolet SUV and a Ford Mustang crashed into each other and hit a small above-ground section of an Enbridge oil pipeline in an industrial park in New Lenox, Ill., causing a spill and fire that killed two people and injured three.

The pipeline was shut down within hours of the accident early Saturday morning and will remain shut down until Thursday morning, an Enbridge spokeswoman said.

The outage could worsen an already constrained oil distribution system between Canada and the U.S. and send the prices for Canadian oil lower. Canada's access to buyers in the US has been limited as storage and refining space in the Midwest has been filled by surging production in Canada and the western US.

The downed Enbridge Line 14/64 pipeline normally transports 317,000 bpd of oil along Enbridge's Lakehead System, which is the largest crude oil pipeline to the US from the US's largest supplier, Canada.

Line 14/64 connects oil storage in Superior, Wis., to refiners near Griffith, Ind. Enbridge's Line 6A, which transports 670,000 bpd of oil, also runs between Superior and Griffith, and will be operational. Line 14 will be restarted Wednesday evening and Line 14 Thursday morning, the Enbridge spokeswoman said.