Colonial Pipeline has restored operations at its Cedar Bayou facility, one of the facilities near Houston where U.S. Gulf Coast fuel to be shipped to the Northeast is loaded into its main distillate line, the company said on Nov. 16.

The "injection point" on Line 2 was flooded two weeks ago after heavy rain in the Houston area. Colonial said on Nov. 3 it shut the facility to allow for water to recede and for subsequent repairs.

Shippers who had intended to load barrels at Cedar Bayou had to use other injection points along Line 2 during the outage. The pipeline operated normally otherwise, and Line 1, the main gasoline line, was unaffected.

The outage fueled a brief boost in Gulf Coast ultra-low sulfur diesel prices, because Colonial announced the Cedar Bayou shutdown on the same day that a five-day lifting cycle was scheduled to move on Line 2.

Barrels slated to be injected at Cedar Bayou were diverted to other loading facilities amid a trading flurry that deflated the next day.

Colonial connects Gulf Coast refineries with markets across the southern and eastern United States through more than 5,500 miles (8,850 km) of its pipeline system. Overall the system moves about 3 million barrels per day of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined products.