Louisiana pipeline blast kills one

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A motorist was killed and another was injured when the Columbia Gulf natural gas pipeline in northeast Louisiana exploded on Friday afternoon near an interstate highway, said a Louisiana State Police spokeswoman.

All three natural gas lines that make up Columbia Gulf Pipeline, which carries natural gas to the Midwest, Northeast and Southeast United States, were shut at the blast site near Delhi, Louisiana, pipeline operator NiSource Inc said in a posting on its Web site.

Corbin Fawcett, 47, of Haleyville, Alabama, and George McCaleb, 58, of Fayetteville, Alabama, were traveling east in a pickup truck on Interstate Highway 20 when the pipeline exploded at about 1 p.m. CST (2 p.m. EST), said Sgt. Julie Lewis of the Louisiana State Police.

Earlier media reports said the deceased man was fishing near the pipeline when it exploded, but those were incorrect, Lewis said.

Fawcett was killed and McCaleb was taken to a hospital for treatment of second-degree burns to his hands.

In the Web site posting, NiSource said it expected to resume moving gas through one of the lines that make up the pipeline Friday night.

NiSource declared force majeure for the line on which the explosion occurred. Force majeure is invoked when a company cannot comply with the terms of a contract for reasons beyond its control.

"It's too early to say what impact this will have on the price of gas," said Rand LaVonn, spokesman for Dallas-based Atmos Energy Corp, the nation's largest natural gas-only distributor serving a dozen states. Atmos also procures gas for industrial and municipal customers in 22 states.

"It will impact the supply of gas as Atmos and others reroute gas from one pipeline to another," LaVonn said. "We'll have to wait and see."