(Bloomberg) -- A pipeline the oil market had all but forgotten resurfaced like a painful memory last week, spilling 500 barrels of heavy oil into the Pacific Ocean.
Line 901. A quarter century ago, it was a pipeline full of promise. Today, it’s full of -- not much, really. Before it leaked on May 19, pouring viscous crude into the waters off California’s coast, the 24-inch line was schlepping 28,800 barrels a day, mostly to a small refinery near Santa Barbara, at less than a fifth of its capacity.
It’s a relic from another time, an era that peaked in the 1990s when drillers dove into the waters off California’s coast chasing billions of barrels lying beneath the ocean floor. The state was producing so much crude back then that a larger pipeline was built to send California’s offshore oil to Texas. Today, Kinder Morgan Inc. has a plan to revive that link -- to send Texas oil to California’s refiners.
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