Fire Continues at Wyoming Natgas Facility, Disrupts Supply

NEW YORK, A fire is still raging at Williams Companies Inc's natural gas processing plant in Opal, Wyoming, that exploded on Wednesday afternoon, disrupting regional supplies, a company spokeswoman said on Thursday.

The fire broke out at 2 p.m. MDT (2000 GMT) on Wednesday and led to the evacuation of residents in a nearby town and 42 employees at the facility. No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire is still unknown.

Williams has shut natural gas gathering pipelines that feed the facility, interrupting nearly 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas supply, spokeswoman Michele Swaner said.

The outage comes at a time when natural gas stocks are at 11-year lows following high demand during an especially brutal winter. This will reinforce concerns that the industry will not be able to restore depleted inventories.

The Opal plant processes natural gas from local wells before it is injected into pipelines and converts gas into natural gas liquids. It can churn out about 2 percent of U.S. daily natural gas supply.

The plant is at a crossroads for five pipelines that connect to California, Oregon and Canada and head east across the Rocky Mountains.

(thestreet.com Edited by Topco)