4A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2006
ALASKA
Al Grillo/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oil and gas pipelines run into Alysake's trans-Alaska oil pipeline pump station one on Alaska's North Slope on Saturday near Deadhorse, Alaska. The nation's largest oil field on Alaska's North Slope and the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline were shut down Tuesday because of stormy weather. Flooding near the terminus of the pipeline, caused by heavy rain in southcentral Alaska, is suspected of knocking out fiber optic communication lines along the pipeline, said Mike Heatwalt, spokesman for Alaska Pipeline Service Co.
Stormy weather cuts oil production
ANCHORAGE, Alaska The nation's largest oil field and the trans-Alaska oil pipeline were shut down Tuesday after poor weather at both ends of the 800-mile pipeline caused havoc.
DAN JOLING ASSOCIATED PRESS
BP PLC said high winds were to blame for a power outage that shut down Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska. Production fell to about 20,000 barrels Tuesday; about 350,000 barrels were produced Monday.
Analysts said any impact on oil prices would depend on how long it takes to restore production and distribution of the region's oil.
Separately, Alysese Pipeline Service Co. shut down the trans-
Beaudo said crews would work Tuesday to wash insulators, restore power and ramp up production. He could not predict whether the work would take more than one day.
"I don't think it's a very big deal."
Fitzpatrick said.
Alyeska spokesman Mike Heatwole said company protocol calls for the pipeline to be shut when valves cannot be closed — to limit the size of any spills — remotely. The valves must be then staffed by crews that can manually operate the valves, he said.
Alaska pipeline as a safety precaution after fiber-optic communication lines that allow operators to remotely control valves were knocked out of service, presumably by flooding.
"We lost communication with five of our remote gate valves just north of Valdez at about 4 a.m. Alaska time," Heatwole said.
Fimat USA oil broker Mike Fitzpatrick said the market does not appear concerned, for now, at what appears to be a temporary supply disruption.
At Prudhoe Bay, layers of dust and dirt blown by high winds built up on high voltage insulators on power lines, causing a short just before 3 a.m., BP spokesman Daren Beaudu said.
Oil prices fell to their lowest level in eight months Tuesday, settling at
Winds were blowing about 12 mph at Deadhorse near the time of the outage, said Tom Dang of the National Weather Service. However, they were blowing significantly most of Monday, with peak gusts of about 66 mph midday Monday.
The Alaska Department of Transportation closed a 65-mile stretch of the highway, starting near Valdez.
$58.52 a barrel, as doubts mounted that OPEC is on the verge of slashing its output by almost 4 percent.
Communications are a critical
component for operations of the trans-Alaska pipeline, which carries nearly 17 percent of the nation's domestic oil supply daily.
Flooding and mudslides along the Richardson Highway, which parallels the pipeline and is the only roadway out of Valdez, disrupted vehicle traffic.
BP has said it ultimately will replace 16 of 22 miles of transit lines. It expects to get replacement pipe by the end of the year, with construction beginning early next year.
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>> WASHINGTON, D.C.
Republicans reconsider handling of page scandal
ANDREW TAYLOR
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe said Tuesday he told the House official in charge of the page program as early as 2001 about Rep. Mark Foley's "creepy" e-mail to a former page.
Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, said a
Republican in former page he had sponsored contacted his office to complain of e-mails from Foley and that he "passed along" the complaint to Foley, RFla., and then House Clerk Jeff Trandahl. Kolbe said he did not take
"I didn't think anybody at any time in my office did anything wrong. If they did cover something up, then they should not continue to have their jobs."
page involved e-mails that were described as "creepy" but were not seen by Kolbe, and occurred in 2001 or 2002, well before House leaders say they first learned of inappropriate messages sent by Foley.
Kolbe is the second person to come forward and say that top House officials had early warnings about inappropriate Foley
DENNIS HASTERT
House Speaker
the matter to other lawmakers.
"As to Congressman Thomas M. Reynolds, the speaker said, 'If he had mentioned this problem to me, I surely would have taken notice,' Weyrich added in an account of a phone conversation with Hastert. Reynolds, R-N.Y., heads the House Republican campaign organization.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., again said his staff aides acted appropriately last fall in handling information on Foley's conduct.
The developments unfolded as a prominent conservative quoted Hastert as casting doubt on claims by two members of the leadership in connection with the page scandal.
"I didn't think anybody at any time in my office did anything wrong," Hastert said. But he also issued a stern warning: "If they did cover something up, then they should not continue to have their jobs."
Hastert "assured me that the statement by Congressman John A. Boehner ... that months ago he had told Hastert about the page problem with Congressman Foley, was incorrect," Paul Weyrich wrote in an e-mail commentary on the issue. Boehner, R-Ohio, is the majority leader.
Weyrich quoted Hastert as saying Reynolds often came to him with numerous requests to help "incumbents who are in trouble. The speaker said he signs off on the majority of requests and only listens with one ear because the requests are repetitive."
Kolbe spokeswoman Korenna Cline said the complaints to the lawmaker from a former
approaches to pages.
Trandahl, the top administrative officer of the House,
got his job from Hastert.
A lawyer for Kirk Fordham, Foley's long-time chief of staff, said Fordham will tell the House
ethics panel Thursday that he warned Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, about inappropriate Foley conduct with pages in 2003 or possibly the previous year. Palmer has denied Fordham's account.
Hastert says he learned of Foley's conduct toward pages only on Sept. 29, when the Florida lawmaker abruptly resigned after being confronted by ABC News with copies of lurid instant messages he had sent to a former page.
About a year ago, Hastert aides learned from Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., about "overfriendly" but not sexually explicit e-mails from Foley to a former page from Louisiana. The aides did not inform Hastert, according to an account by his office.
"Some time after leaving the page program, an individual I had appointed as a page contacted my office to say he had received e-mails from Rep. Foley that made him uncomfortable," Kolbe said in a statement. "I was not shown the content of the messages and was not told they were sexually explicit. It was my recommendation that this complaint be passed along to Rep. Foley's office and the clerk who supervised the page program. This was done promptly."
Kolbe, who is retiring from Congress at the end of this year, defended his actions in response to the complaint from the former page.
Asked about Kolbe's statement, Hastert told reporters in Aurora, Ill.: "I don't know anything more about it. If there's something that was of a nature that should have been reported or brought forward, then he should have done that."