Xcel Energy cleared Eau Claire residents to crank thermostats above 60 degrees after one of three natural gas pipelines damaged in an explosion Saturday was repaired.

Xcel, Eau Claire’s main provider of heat and electricity, asked about 130,000 customers in three states to turn thermostats down following an explosion in Manitoba, Canada early Saturday morning.

“One (pipeline) was returned to service, and that allowed our residential customers to use gas,”  Xcel spokesperson Liz Wolf Green said.

Wolf Green said the main explosion on a TransCanada pipeline damaged two other lines that deliver natural gas to parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota.

“We don’t know the cause of (the explosion) yet … but an accident like this is extremely rare,” Wolf Green said.

The explosion affected about 46,000 Xcel customers from Dunn, Eau Claire, Chippewa and St. Croix counties, she said.

Xcel called Eau Claire residents early Sunday morning and asked them to turn down heat in their homes to 60 degrees to conserve natural gas. Wolf Green said keeping home temps close to 60 helped stabilize the damaged pipelines.

Eau Claire County emergency management coordinator Tom Hurley said the county briefed the Red Cross and local sheriffs on the Xcel situation.

“As long as natural gas is still flowing, we don’t have an incident,” Hurley said. “Because Xcel was able to provide fuel, we took no actions.”

But large consumers of natural gas like the University Power Plant and the Eau Claire Courthouse are still operating without natural gas.

The courthouse switched from natural gas to fuel oil Saturday afternoon and won’t use gas until Xcel gives word, Hurley said.

Jim Franklin, UW-Eau Claire power plant superintendent, said the university has been running on coal alone since 2:30 pm Sunday.

 “We took our boilers off natural gas completely,” Franklin said. “We did this as an urgent request by Xcel energy.”

Franklin said he’s still waiting for Xcel’s go-ahead before turning the gas back on. The plant’s coal reserves are stocked, and the university can run on other fuel sources “indefinitely,” he said.

“We have been told that by this evening, Xcel was hoping to re-establish gas in one of the mains in Canada,” Franklin said. “With the central heating plant, you have a lot of different fuel options and it allows you that flexibility to just kind of roll with this type of thing.”