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British Columbia natgas exports to Washington rise slowly after pipe blast

Reuters

(Reuters) - The amount of natural gas moving from British Columbia to Washington state through the Sumas hub edged up over the weekend after Enbridge Inc (Toronto:ENB.TO - News) last week returned a pipeline to service following a pipe blast in British Columbia.

The reduction in the amount of gas flowing through the point, however, caused prices at the hub to rocket to their highest since 2014.

Enbridge returned a 30-inch (76-centimeter) gas pipe in British Columbia that was shut after a fire on an adjacent 36-inch line on Oct. 9, leading to supply disruptions in British Columbia and Washington.

Enbridge said Sunday it was building a road to bring equipment to the site of the blast to fix the damaged pipe. The company, however, did not say when the damaged pipe would return to service.

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The amount of gas flowing through the Sumas Hub from British Columbia to Sumas rose to 0.3 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) over the weekend from 0.2 bcfd on Thursday and Friday and zero on Wednesday.

In the 30 days prior to the Oct. 9 blast, the amount of gas flowing through the Sumas hub averaged about 1.1 bcfd, according to data from Refinitiv.

One billion cubic feet of gas is enough to fuel about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.

Next-day prices at the Sumas hub jumped to $8.64 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) for Monday, their highest since February 2014, from $2.90 for Friday, according to data from SNL.

In addition to cutting gas supplies to the Fortis BC gas utility in British Columbia and Puget Sound Energy in Washington, the pipeline shutdowns caused at least three refineries in Washington to shut or curb operations.

Fortis BC is a unit of Canadian energy company Fortis Inc (Toronto:FTS.TO - News).

Gas pipes into Washington can transport about 1.8 bcfd from British Columbia, 2.6 bcfd from Idaho and 0.8 bcfd from Oregon.

Gas pipes out of Washington, meanwhile, can move about 0.05 bcfd to British Columbia, 0.06 bcfd to Idaho and 3.6 bcfd to Oregon.

Most of the gas that comes into Washington from Idaho ends up in California. That gas comes from Canada.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Marguerita Choy)