US gasoline pipe restart delayed to next weekOREANDA-NEWS. September 16, 2016. A major pipeline moving gasoline from the US Gulf coast to the Atlantic coast and New York Harbor market will not restart before next week after heavy gasoline vapors slowed repair efforts overnight on.

Work to repair a break in Colonial Pipline's gasoline-bearing Line 1, moving the fuel from the Texas Coast to a terminal in Greensboro, North Carolina, had resumed today, the company said.

Colonial also for a second day continued to split space on the pipeline's twin — the distillates-bearing Line 2 — to move gasoline around a break discovered 9 September that released 6,000 bl of gasoline west of Pelham, Alabama. That gasoline would begin arriving in the southeast on 17 September, the company said.

"We expect additional downtime in delivering gasoline as we wait on the restart," the company said in a notification to shippers.

The 5,500-mile (8,851km) pipeline system supplies products through the southeast into Tennessee from Georgia and moves on from Greensboro up to Linden, New Jersey.

Federal regulators yesterday relaxed gasoline specifications requiring summer-grade fuel in the Atlanta, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee, metroplexes. Those requirements expire at midnight today. Some refiners have also shifted products to move on domestic tanker ships authorized to deliver between US ports as the pipeline work continued today.

Large volumes of products in US Atlantic coast storage may soften the loss of the primary source of fuel to the region. Total gasoline inventories ended last week at 64mn bl, or 5pc higher than the same week last year and more than 9mn bl higher than the ten-year average for the week.

Total distillates in regional storage increased by 3.5mn bl last week to 66.6mn bl, almost 9mn bl larger than the same week last year.