HOUSTON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - A series of natural gas pipeline explosions in Midland County, Texas sent five people to the hospital with critical burn injuries, and interrupted energy pipeline operations in the area, officials said. The region is the home to the Permian Basin, the largest U.S. oilfield, and is crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines. Pipeline operator Kinder Morgan said on Wednesday it had isolated a portion of its El Paso Natural Gas Pipeline (EPNG) as a precaution, after being alerted to the fire near its line. “There was a third-party pipeline involved that also experienced a failure, and preliminary indications are that the third-party line failure occurred before the EPNG line failure,” Kinder Morgan’s Hughes said in an email. The pipeline explosion occurred on a rural road, FM 1379, about five miles south of Highway 158 at around 11:30 a.m. local time, Ladd said, adding that the road had been closed.

Source: Huffington Post August 02, 2018 05:37 UTC