Rain and terrain slowed excavation work that continued this morning to repair a gasoline pipeline supplying the Nashville, Tennessee market.
Colonial Pipeline said a storm forecast and "hilly, rocky terrain" slowed work to reach a leak discovered 7 January near Chattanooga, Tennessee, on the gasoline-bearing Line 19 pipeline connecting Atlanta, Georgia, to Nashville.
"The largest unknown is the impact forecasted rain may have on our progress," the pipeline operator said in an update to shippers.
Line 20, delivering distillates and jet fuel over the same path, continued to operate after a brief shutdown during the initial investigation of the leak. Chattanooga, which takes fuel off of Colonial's Line 18 pipeline branching off to Knoxville, Tennessee, also continued to receive fuel.
Ample fuel inventories at the time of the leak muted supply concerns in Nashville, Tennessee Fuel & Convenience Store association executive director Emily LeRoy said.
"We are prepared to jump in, pulling fuel from other sources, if that does become necessary," LeRoy said. "But we just do not see it right now."
It was the third Colonial Pipeline outage to the region in four months, but the smallest affected market area. A September release and repair shut Colonial's main Line 1 gasoline pipeline delivering fuel from near Houston, Texas, to the US Atlantic coast, for 13 days. The break, just west of Birmingham, Alabama, cut supplies across most of the system supplying terminals in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina.
A fatal accident in October during repair on that break again shut supplies across the pipeline system. Colonial removed a temporary bypass and restored Line 1 on 21 November.
