Enbridge Says `Drain-Up' Completed, Most Oil Recovered After Illinois Leak

Enbridge Energy Partners LP drained most of the oil from a damaged pipeline in Illinois that has disrupted crude transports from Canada to the refineries in the U.S. Midwest and helped push prices higher.

The Line 6A pipe, in Romeoville, 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, remains shut and there’s no estimate for when it may start, the Houston-based company said today in a statement. “Enbridge’s schedulers are working with shippers to divert crude oil volumes to other available pipelines and storage facilities,” the company said today.

Crude oil for October delivery rose 77 cents, or 1 percent, to $77.22 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange as supply disruption coincided with optimism about recovery in the U.S. and growing oil demand in China.

Enbridge said it finished the “drain up” of the remaining oil and that it collected about 6,050 barrels out of the 6,100 leaked. The 670,000-barrel-a-day pipe, which can supply more than one-third of the oil imported from Canada by Midwestern refiners, was shut Sept. 9 after leaking oil.

Top Priority

“The health and safety of the public and of the people working on the clean-up remain Enbridge’s top priority,” President Terrance McGill said in a statement.

Citgo Petroleum Corp. said on Sept. 10 that it’s seeking other supplies for its 170,500-barrel-a-day Lemont refinery thar gets crude through the pipeline. ConocoPhillips’ Wood River plant and Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Joliet refinery in Illinois, along with BP Plc’s Whiting plant in Indiana, are also located in the vicinity of the pipeline.

The 34-inch line runs 466 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, to Griffith, Indiana, according to an Enbridge website. It carries light, medium and sour crudes.

Canada is the largest exporter of crude to the U.S., sending 2.2 million barrels a day in June, according to the Energy Department. More than a quarter of that arrives by pipeline into the Chicago area.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is investigating the incident, Patricia Klinger, an agency spokeswoman, said in an e- mail yesterday. The National Transportation Safety Board also has an investigator at the site, she said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Christian Schmollinger in Singapore at christian.s@bloomberg.net; Paul Burkhardt in New York at pburkhardt@bloomberg.net.