Alaskan Pipeline Shut Down: Leak Discovered

Link here.

The Trans Alaska Pipeline shut down on Saturday (January 8, 2011) after a leak was discovered at the intake pump station at Prudhoe Bay, constricting supply in one of the United States' key oil arteries. 

Some quick bullets:

• Operated by BP. (Yup, that's the same company that operated the well in the Gulf that blew in summer, 2010.)
• The pipeline accounts for 12 percent of US oil production.
• Ships 630,000 bbls/day.
• Unknown how long shutdown will last.
• Shipments from the terminus of the pipeline are unaffected; tankers are being loaded on schedule.
• No evidence the concrete encasement has been broached; if true, no environmental impact.

Comments:

• Price of oil will rise Monday, all things being equal.
• Direct economic impact will be minimal long term; back to normal within a month. (Didn't get reported on DrudgeReport and is not yet on Yahoo!Financial news page, January 9, 2011.)
• Indirect impact will be greater: anti-oil advocates will call for more regulation.
•  This can only be seen as more bad news for the oil industry.

[Update, January 19, 2011, Wednesday a.m.: apparently the start-up of the bypass came on line without incident and fanfare;  the target rate for today is 510,000 barrels a day. The pipeline carried 641,517 barrels a day in December. Alaska crude oil stockpiles were 583,943 barrels yesterday, after dropping as much as 83 percent after the disruption to 432,962 barrels on Jan. 15.]
[Update, January 17, 2011, Monday a.m.: supposedly the bypass has been completed; no announcement that oil has started flowing; oil dropped a bit in price but still over $91; markets closed today, Martin Luther King Day.]
[Update, January 16, 2011, Sunday a.m.: the pipeline was shut down just after midnight Saturday (that would be early morning Saturday, or early morning Sunday (unclear) -- to me, that would mean early morning Sunday)  for repairs. It is expected to remain closed for 36 hours. If so, we should see news reports on/about Tuesday, January 18, 2011, that oil is flowing once again.]
[Update, January 13, 2011: see update here.]
[Update, January 12, 2011: 400,000 bopd now coming through pipeline, but that is too little to keep the pipeline open; a very, very interesting story; I think this is a bigger story than media suggesting, and much of it due to moratorium on drilling in Alaska. No link. From CNBC. 
[Update, January 11, 2011: bypass pipeline underway. But could someone post the "real" percent of America's oil that comes through the pipeline. The first story (Sunday) said the pipeline represented 12 percent of America's production; yesterday they said 9 percent; today, the number is 15 percent. Those are not minor differences.]
[Update, January 10, 2011: pipeline shut for 3rd day; oil up 1 percent; why isn't the jump in oil price much bigger?]
[Update: 8:21 p.m. EST, Crude Soars on News of Pipeline Shutdown.]
[Update: Unrelated to spill. Price of oil could hit $110 within weeks according to OPEC official.]
[Update: Event considered "significant" by BP.]
[Update, 6:40 p.m. EST, Sunday night, January 9, 2011 -- Futures show oil up $1.32.]