Pipeline to Wood River Restarts
The crude pipeline to Wood River is going to restart, says officials. News of the restart strengthened the front-month spread between July and August U.S. crude futures and helped U.S. crude futures pare losses. PLX did not elaborate on the cause of the shutdown in the shipper notice but traders have said the issue was likely due to flooding in the region.
NEW YORK MPLX LP said on Wednesday that the issue that forced the shutdown of its 360,000 barrels per day (bpd) Ozark crude pipeline from Cushing, Okla., to Wood River, Ill., has been resolved, traders told Reuters, citing a shipper notice.
The company expects to restart the line early on Friday and it will operate at full capacity upon restart, according to the notice.
U.S. cash crude markets at Cushing, the delivery point for U.S. crude futures had weakened significantly on Tuesday after the outage.
News of the restart strengthened the front-month spread between July and August U.S. crude futures and helped U.S. crude futures pare losses, traders and brokers said.
Trading in the spread is closely tied to supply and demand at Cushing and it had weakened to trade at the widest level in nearly three months earlier in the session.
Representatives of MPLX did not immediately respond to a requests for comment.
MPLX did not elaborate on the cause of the shutdown in the shipper notice but traders have said the issue was likely due to flooding in the region.
More than a week of violent weather, including downpours and deadly tornadoes, has devastated the central United States, bringing record-breaking floods in parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas, turning highways into lakes and submerging all but the roofs of some homes.
More rain is forecast, and the flooding is expected to spread, according to the National Weather Service (NWS) and local officials.