(Incorporates prior updates and latest developments; Recasts first paragraph, adds details throughout) NEW YORK, Sept 24 (Reuters) - A fire at Kinder Morgan Energy Partners' <KMP.N> Pasadena, Texas, oil products terminal was extinguished this morning and the company expects to resume oil product flow to Colonial and Explorer pipelines within the next two days, the company said Wednesday. "The manifolds serving the Colonial and Explorer pipelines are on the opposite side of the facility and have been temporarily shut down, but the company currently expects to resume operations at those manifolds in the next 24 to 48 hours," a Kinder Morgan press release said. The fire occurred in a manifold pit, a section where pipelines interconnect. The company did not have an estimate of how much oil product was lost in the fire, company spokesman Joe Hollier said. The Pasadena terminal supplies the two largest pipelines in the United States, the Colonial and Explorer pipelines. "After the fire, Colonial began drawing from other origin sources, but the connections and pipelines with Kinder Morgan were undamaged, and we will be going back there to resume service," said Colonial spokesman Steve Baker. He said the pipeline's main line was still operating at reduced rates due to a lack of supply caused by recent hurricanes. During the outage at Pasadena, Colonial pipeline has been drawing product from Lake Charles and Baton Rouge, Baker said. The Colonial pipeline, the largest pipeline in the United States, flows an average of 2.3 million barrels per day of gasoline and distillate fuels from Pasadena, Texas, to the New York Harbor area. A spokesman from Explorer pipeline said the terminal is Explorer's single largest supplier, but said the company is still trying to determine the impact the fire will have on pipeline operations. "Any kind of disruption comes at a bad time," Explorer spokesman Rod Woodford said. Explorer has been at reduced rates since it was shut down due to Hurricane Ike. Explorer pipeline, which runs from Lake Charles to Chicago, can pump as much as 700,000 barrels per day of distillates and gasoline. The Longhorn Pipeline, which according to Kinder Morgan had ordered some batches of refined product through the Pasadena facility, said on Wednesday it had stopped shipping oil products from its Galena Park, Texas, terminal because of the fire. "We have ceased pumping from Galena Park, which is our point of origin," said Amber Pappas, a spokeswoman for the pipeline. Longhorn can carry 72,000 barrels per day of different grades of gasoline and diesel from the Gulf Coast refineries to El Paso, Texas, where other carriers offload. The fire at Kinder's Pasadena comes on the heels of Hurricane Ike, which shut the facility. Prior to the fire, the Pasadena Hub was running at almost 95 percent of capacity after Ike swept through the Galveston-Houston area on Sept. 13. One employee was injured due to the fire and taken to a local hospital. Pasadena is a large terminal located south of Houston with around 15 million barrels of gasoline and oil products storage supplies. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino, Rebekah Kebede, and Janet McGurty; editing by Jim Marshall)
Meat and frozen food cases stand empty at a Food Town grocery store on the north side of Houston operating on generator power to serve their customers as residents search for ...
