Pipeline restarts after weekend shutdown to deal with leak LEAK: 24-hour goal is to get the flow up to 500,000 barrels a day.

The trans-Alaska oil pipeline was restarted Monday morning after a shutdown of about 58 hours to repair a leak.

The Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. shut down the 800-mile pipeline early Saturday morning to install a bypass pipe around the leak at Pump Station 1, where the pipeline starts on the North Slope. The shutdown had been expected to last 36 hours.

Michelle Egan, spokeswoman for Alyeska, told The Associated Press the target goal for the next 24 hours was to bring the pipeline up to 500,000 barrels a day.

Full production of roughly 630,000 barrels a day -- worth $55 million -- could be resumed later this week.

The leak was discovered nine days ago at a pump-station booster pump. The leak site is believed to be a below-ground pipe encased in concrete that hadn't been examined as of Monday.

Egan said crews completed work on a 157-foot bypass line to go around the leak and began the process for restarting the pipeline shortly after 4 a.m.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said sealing and draining the pipe during the weekend took longer than expected.

After the leak was discovered on Jan. 8, Alyeska shut down the pipe for about 84 hours and production at the more than two dozen oil fields was reduced 5 percent of normal, or about 30,000 barrels a day.

For the second shutdown last weekend, the oil fields were producing at a rate of 75,000 to 150,000 barrels a day, Alyeska said, with production flowing into two storage tanks.

Alyeska said the original leak in the pump station basement stopped after Alyeska shut down the pipeline for the bypass this weekend.

As of Monday morning, Alyeska had recovered about 13,300 gallons of spilled oil from the building where the leak occurred.

No oil has been discovered outside the building, the company said. Alyeska and government pollution regulators said neither wildlife nor the environment appeared to have been harmed.

More than 600 people have been involved in responding to the leak, including 375 workers at Pump Station 1. That large response effort is scheduled to be reduced today but Alyeska said it will keep a team in place to monitor the pipeline until crude oil temperatures inside the line rise back up to normal levels. Regulators for the state said they will assign a project manager to manage its investigation of the pipeline leak.

The North Slope oil fields account for about 11 percent of U.S. domestic production.

Oil companies BP, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries and Chevron own the pipeline, which runs from the oil fields to the tanker port at Valdez.

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