When gas wells explode

Don Young remembered Palo Pinto this week on the anniversary of that explosion.

Remember Palo Pinto

He has some great links.

And while I’m on explosions…

I’ve reported before about the defective steel pipeline. If pipeline was installed in your area during the period of 2007 and 2009, you might want to read this report:

USE OF SUBSTANDARD STEEL BY THE U.S. PIPELINE INDUSTRY 2007 TO 2009

SUMMARY
Between 2007 and 2009 a number of pipe mills produced substandard steel pipe for U.S. pipeline companies. This pipe failed to comply with the American Petroleum Institute Grade 5L X70 standard (API 5L X70 Standard). In response to this discovery of defective pipe, on May 21, 2009, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) issued Advisory Bulletin ABD-09-01, entitled “Potential Low and Variable Yield and Tensile Strength and Chemical Composition Properties in High Strength Line Pipe” (Advisory Bulletin). The Advisory Bulletin described the low strength steel pipe issue and recommended an industry response to it in very general terms.

If you need some motivation to wade through the 17 pages of the report, read this:

New natural gas and hazardous liquid pipelines are larger, higher pressure, and more dangerous than earlier generations of pipelines.

And if that’s not enough to send you to the medicine cabinet, there is a new report out on Corroding pipelines.

As the number of people at risk increases, questions about the manner and scope of government regulation in this area become more urgent, as do questions about why the government has failed take a host of safety-enhancing actions recommended by, among others, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Why, for example, do the Department of Transportation and its Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration rely so heavily on after-blast reviews, rather than on prevention?

Why do some key safety recommendations from the National Academy of Engineering and the National Transportation Safety Board gather dust? Among these are developing model land use ordinances and standard setbacks for construction near pipelines as part of a risk-based safety strategy, addressing potential damage to natural gas pipelines whose shipping may not have complied with safety rules, and requiring pipeline operators to have a system to calculate estimated release of gas or liquids.

Why has PHMSA not tightened its regulations over time, but instead granted safety waivers? Why doesn’t PHMSA focus on ways to improve detection of corrosion and other damage to pipelines? And why hasn’t PHMSA followed the Transportation Safety Board recommendation that it measure the effectiveness of mandatory notices to people who live or work in zones where a blast would result in certain death or injury?

See, this is something most people never think about when they sign those leases to get their “free money.” Every well will need a pipeline and, whether they admit it or not, it will eventually need a compressor or shared compressor. Oh, and don’t forget about the gas processing plant.

And another thing they never mention is lightening strikes or grass fires.

You know, some people complain that windmills are an eyesore (I think they are beautiful) and they don’t like solar panels either, but I hardly ever hear about windmills or solar panels exploding.