Gulf Coast Refinery Situation

[Ani Ibi]

Enbridge pipelines suffer

By TAVIA GRANT, Globe and Mail, 02 Sept 2005

Enbridge Inc., whose natural-gas pipelines in the Mississippi Canyon corridor of the Gulf of Mexico were hit by Hurricane Katrina, said late Thursday that power outages are causing a delay in restarting operations. Calgary-based Enbridge operates five pipeline systems in the Gulf...

...Before Hurricane Katrina, the Enbridge Gulf Offshore System moved on average about 3 billion cubic feet per day, amounting to about half of all deepwater Gulf of Mexico natural-gas production.

Damaged infrastructure continues to hamper communication with the company's onshore facilities. Enbridge said its primary focus is to account for all employees who were evacuated and to protect personnel working to bring the facilities back into service. But efforts to contact some employees have proved difficult because of communication problems.

[Ani Ibi]

The Energy Department says natural gas prices could increase as much as 71 percent in parts of the United States this fall, raising the prospect of higher home heating costs this winter. Source