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New gas transmission pipelines are having construction quality problems:

By

Submitted by GhostBlogger

New gas transmission pipelines are having construction quality problems:

“In 2009, just six weeks after passing a battery of final pressure tests, the (REX) line leaked natural gas – triggering an evacuation of nearby homes in southeastern Ohio. The leak occurred in a pipeline section that federal safety inspectors had previously flagged for poor construction techniques.”

“The leak in Ohio was the last in a string of problems with REX. One worker digging the line in Wyoming was incinerated when his bulldozer hit another buried line; another firm was fined for not marking it properly. In Kansas, inspectors said they received threats when they flagged bad work.”

At 42 inches & 1400 psi of pressure, the kill zone for that pipeline failing would be well over 1000 feet in radius.

New gas gathering pipeline construction woes are covered in another article:

“There was trouble on the job. Far too many of the welds that tied the pipe sections together were failing inspection and had to be done over.”

“A veteran welder, now an organizer for a national pipeline union, happened upon the line and tried to blow the whistle on what he considered substandard work.”

“But there was no one to call.”

“Hundreds of miles of high-pressure pipelines already have been installed in the shale fields with no government safety checks – no construction standards, no inspections, and no monitoring.”

About Sharon Wilson

Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.

Comments

  1. Anonomous says

    Excellent post above. All those problems if everything is being done in accordance with the “rules”. And then when corrosion sets in more problems. Just a few of the common corrosive agents are: (all depend on the quality of the steel used in the line and line pressure)
    H2S and water.
    CO2 and water
    Chlorine (saltwater)
    catalytic corrosion,
    others.

  2. GhostBlogger says

    Those corrosives are often in raw gas. That’s why pipelines carrying raw gas need frequent pigging & corrosion inhibitor injection. Liquids containing those corrosives pool up in low spots in pipelines, so you must do both of those to preserve the pipeline.

    Gas transmission pipelines have also had internal corrosion, to the point of failing. The EPNG pipeline failures that killed 12 people in Carlsbad NM in 2000 showed sulfates, carbonates, & chlorides in the residue of that pipeline at other nearby locations. EPNG had made the mistake to assume they would only be shipped clean, pipeline quality gas. They didn’t bother to monitor internal corrosion. Read the NTSB Report about it online.

    Plenty of confusion over this issue, for some shale gas types have insisted their gas is “dry”. The real meaning of dry gas:

    http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/background.asp

    “Natural gas is considered ‘dry’ when it is almost pure methane, having had most of the other commonly associated hydrocarbons removed. When other hydrocarbons are present, the natural gas is ‘wet’.”

    So, if they say their gas is dry, it officially means there’s little ethane, propane, butane, etc. in it. Fracking releases/makes tons of salt water, that WILL get into the produced raw gas, so gas producers need to watch & treat for chloride corrosion. H2S & other compounds can vary in the gas stream, so that also needs to be controlled.

    Hint to gas producers: If it shows up in the used fracking water, it’s in the raw gas.