LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Governor Joe Lombardo declared a state of emergency on Friday. It follows a leak in a California gas pipeline that supplies gasoline and diesel fuel to warehouses in Southern Nevada.
Kinder Morgan, an energy infrastructure company, announced that work had resumed on Saturday afternoon.
The leak was discovered on Thursday.
The declaration allows Nevada to obtain federal resources and exemptions while dealing with the pipeline.
However, Governor Lombardo says that although the pipeline has been successfully restarted, the state of emergency will remain in place until “fuel transportation and supply” returns to normal.
“They’ve rebuilt their pipeline, and now what they need to do is get the flow back through the pipeline and continue to test it, all of our pipelines coming from Arizona, so we have to make sure that those are our stations in it’s filling up here. and our trucking in the city yesterday a lot of our stations were empty and people were getting gas,” said John Olsen, who owns Pipeline Dogs, a company that sniffs out leaks from pipelines.
He has worked across the country and says frequent leak testing is important and necessary.
“Anything from a hole in a hose to a hole the size of a garden to a full hole in a pipe so that the pipe is above the ground and they were able to see the gasoline in the ground itself because they were up high,” Olsen said.
The leak happened in Long Beach, California. Kinder Watson said the pipes and valves were disconnected. But all these events did not stop the local residents from lining up.
In Clark County, officials took to Twitter to ask local residents to conserve fuel and avoid panic buying.
But, unfortunately, this was not the scene. Several petrol stations such as Smiths on West Road were sold out on Friday night.
“We’ve been hearing about pipeline breaks and that’s because gas prices are through the roof, they’re already through the roof,” Olsen said.
“It’s frustrating because it was going down and here we are paying more,” Olsen said.
Drivers say they’re not only gassing up, they’re seeing price hikes.
Excavation of valuables is prohibited during the state of emergency.
He urges Nevadans to avoid panic buying.
When we get back to normal.
“We still have a shortage of the kind of fuel that will take some time for independent truck drivers to get to every empty gas station,” Olsen said.
Click to file a complaint about a possible price increase Here.
Copyright 2023 KVVU. All rights reserved.
