GARYVILLE – A leak from a butane tank caused a short-term closure of the main road going into Garyville on Wednesday of this past week.

Marathon Refinery reported a &#8220pinhole size leak” in a butane tank that was discovered about 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday.

St. John Sheriff’s Office officials closed portions of Highway 54 coming off Airline Highway as a precaution before the leak was contained and eventually fixed.

Marathon Human Resources Manager Bob Kasubinski reported that the leak occurred on the Marathon property between the processing unit and the storage tank.

&#8220We immediately had an air monitoring team on the scene, and they continued to monitor the air in the area to make sure there was nothing being released into the air of any substance. We detected no problems as we quickly got the leak shut down,” he said.

Kasubinski said that the process for such a leak is to slowly reduce the pressure in the line as they spray water on the leak to keep the vapors down.

Within one hour the pressure was down and the leak was shut down. A new pipe was put in on Wednesday night, with the actual leak only continuing for about an hour, he said.