Bad weather shuts Alaska oil pipeline -

Severe weather in Alaska caused a power failure at the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field and knocked out the communications network of the state's main oil pipeline, shutting down both and forcing oil producers to curtail output, industry spokesmen said.
BP Plc, which operates the 400,000 barrels per day Prudhoe Bay oil field on the North Slope, confirmed that the electrical transmission system at the field had been disrupted early Tuesday by high winds and snow forming on the lines.
"The field is shut down right now, but we are hoping to have it brought back up by the end of the day," said BP Alaska spokesman Daren Beaudo.
At the other end of the state, flooding in the port city of Valdez disrupted the telecommunications network of Alyeska Pipeline Services, the operator of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, forcing Alyeska to shut down the line as a precautionary measure, a spokesman said.
Alyeska was working to restore communications and hoped to resume pumping oil through the pipeline by the end of the day, he said.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline carries about 750,000 barrels per day of North Slope oil production and the outage meant operators of other fields that had not been affected by the power problems at Prudhoe Bay were curtailing production, BP's Beaudo said.
A spokesman for ConocoPhillips Inc., which operates the Kuparuk and Alpine fields on the North Slope, was not able to comment.
Alaska is a key source of crude oil for refiners on the US West Coast.
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