Explorer to Shut Pipe Temporarily New
 Year's Eve

 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Explorer Pipeline Co. said Monday it
 plans to idle its entire oil products pipeline system, which feeds
 the Midwest, for 20 hours starting New Year's Eve to guard
 against any unexpected Y2K incidents.

 ``We will do the same thing as Colonial. We will shut our system
 temporarily,'' Explorer President and Chief Executive Officer
 Scott Van Dyke told Reuters by telephone.

 The Houston-to-Chicago Explorer Pipeline, the second largest
 refined products pipeline in America and jointly owned by eight
 oil companies, can pump as much as 700,000 barrels per day of
 refined products like gasoline and distillates.

 Colonial, the No.1 pipeline firm, has already announced an eight
 hour shutdown of its entire 5,300-mile-long oil products line
 from Houston to New York, starting before midnight December
 31, to avoid any such disruptions.

 Officials at Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Explorer said the Explorer
 line shutdown will last from 5:00 p.m. (CST) December 31 until 1
 p.m. January 1, 2000.

 For Colonial, which has a capacity of some 2.1 million bpd, the
 shutdown is due to start at 6:30 p.m. (EST) and last for eight hours.

 Experts fear potential problems to communications or power
 supply, for instance, due to the so-called Year 2000 computer bug,
 which may cause some older computers to malfunction after the
 date roll on December 31, 1999.

 ``We have excess capacity this time of year so the shutdown will
 not be a big problem...We should be able to compensate for the
 supply loss,'' Tom Jensen, Explorer's manager of shipper relations
 and transportation services, told Reuters.

 He said although the Explorer system was Y2K-compliant, like
 Colonial's, the company was taking no chances.

 ``If we had any problems with communications or power supply
 we want to make sure that our line is down at that time so we have
 no unforeseen problems,'' Jensen told Reuters.