Category Archives: Pipeline rupture

Clean-up costs, Offshore drilling, Oil spill, Pipeline rupture, Pipeline transport, Spill prevention and response, Water contamination, Wildlife

Santa Barbara oil spill might have been far larger than projected

Repost from Associated Press
[Editor:  See also local coverage in the Benicia Herald.  – RS]

Oil spill might be larger than projected

By Michael R. Blood, Aug. 5, 2015 4:04 PM EDT
In this May 21 file photo, David Ledig, a national monument manager from the Bureau of Land Management, walks past rocks covered in oil at Refugio State Beach, north of Goleta. New documents released Wednesday show that the Plains All American Pipeline spill, originally estimated to be around 101,000 gallons, might have been much larger than projected. JAE C. HONG , THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — More than two months after oil from a ruptured pipeline fouled California beaches, documents released Wednesday disclosed that the spill might have been far larger than earlier projected.

Plains All American Pipeline had estimated that the May 19 break along a corroded section of pipe near Santa Barbara released up to 101,000 gallons of crude. The resulting mess forced a popular state park to shut down for two months, and goo from the spill washed up on beaches as far as 100 miles away.

In documents made public Wednesday, the Texas-based company said alternate calculations found the spill might have been up to 143,000 gallons, or about 40 percent larger.

The company is continuing its analysis, and the figures are preliminary. Plains All American has hired an outside consultant as part of the effort to reconcile the differences, the documents said.

At this point, the company considers the methodology used in its initial estimate to be “the most straight forward and accurate calculation.” However, it emphasized the estimate could change as the investigation continues.

In a statement, Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-Massachusetts, faulted the federal agency responsible for regulating the nation’s pipelines for the conflicting figures.

“The revelation that the Santa Barbara pipeline spill was much larger than originally thought underscores the importance of our pipeline safety agency providing complete information to Congress and the American people. Unfortunately, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s operational culture has been to withhold information from the American people and Congress,” he said.

The company has been criticized for taking about 90 minutes to alert federal responders after confirming the spill, even though federal regulations require the company to notify the National Response Center, a clearinghouse for reports of hazardous-material releases, “at the earliest practicable moment.” State law requires immediate notification of a release or a threatened release.

The cleanup is nearly complete, although the cause of the break is under investigation. The state attorney general and local prosecutors are considering possible charges, and the documents said the U.S. Justice Department is also investigating.

The company said it’s covering legal costs for several employees who could be questioned by the Justice Department.

No timeline has been set to restart the pipeline.

CEO Greg Armstrong told Wall Street analysts in a phone call that the company faced as much as $257 million in potential costs from the break, which includes estimates for cleanup operations, possible legal claims and fines.

At the end of June, the company said cleanup costs had hit $92 million.

Wildlife officials reported that nearly 200 birds and more than 100 marine mammals were found dead in the spill area. Investigators have not yet determined what, if any, role the spill played in those deaths.

Alberta Canada, Oil spill, Pipeline rupture, Pipeline transport, Tar sands crude

Cause of biggest oil-related spill on land ever in North America – Nexen Energy, Fort McMurray, Alberta

Repost from Reuters
[Editor:  See also:  Nexen pipeline may have been leaking for over two weeks.  Also: Alberta pipelines: 6 major oil spills in recent history.  – RS]

Nexen says may take months to pinpoint cause of Alberta pipeline spill

By Mike De Souza, Jul 22, 2015 6:40pm EDT

FORT MCMURRAY, Alberta  –  Finding the root cause of the oil-sands pipeline leak discovered earlier this month in northern Alberta, one of the biggest oil-related spills on land ever in North America, will likely take months, a senior Nexen Energy executive said on Wednesday. Nexen, a subsidiary of China’s CNOOC Ltd, is putting a higher priority on cleaning up the spill from its pipeline and investigating its cause than on restarting the Kinosis oil sands project where the spill took place, Ron Bailey, Nexen’s senior vice president of Canadian operations, said during a tour of the site.

Bailey said there were about 130 workers doing clean-up and investigation work at the site.

The leak in the double-layer pipeline spilled more than 31,500 barrels of emulsion, a mixture of bitumen, water and sand, onto an area of about 16,000 square meters (172,000 square feet).

“We’ve actually shut in everything at Kinosis and our priority is not to bring Kinosis back on production,” Bailey said. “We will be focusing on understanding the root cause of any failure here and the reliability of our systems before we ever start up this system again.”

The spill site, south of the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray, was detected on July 15 by a contractor walking along the pipeline route. Nexen has not determined when the leak started or why a new state-of-the-art leak detection system failed.

Bailey said leak likely occurred after June 29, when the pipeline was cleaned with water.

Nexen executives on Wednesday brought journalists to tour the site, which smells like tar, and where the company was using sound cannons to deter birds and other wildlife from becoming entangled in the gooey emulsion.

Nexen Chief Executive Fang Zhi personally apologized for the spill on Wednesday, echoing an apology by the company on Friday.

The Nexen leak was larger than the July 2010 rupture of an Enbridge Inc pipeline that spilled an estimated 20,000 barrels of crude, with some reaching Michigan’s Kalamazoo River.

The Nexen spill dealt another blow to the oil sands industry in Alberta, which is under fire from environmental groups and aboriginal communities for its carbon-intensive production process.

Extracting and processing heavy grade oil from the massive oil sands deposits in the Western Canadian province requires large amounts of energy and water.

(With additional writing by Jeffrey Hodgson; Editing by Peter Galloway)
Oil spill, Pipeline rupture, Pipeline transport, Truck transport, Water contamination

Exxon seeks to use trucks to haul oil after pipeline break

Repost from KSBW News, Santa Barbara CA

Exxon seeks to use trucks to haul oil after pipeline break

Associated Press, Jun 05, 2015 1:06 PM PDT
Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, KSBW

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. —An oil company wants to use tanker trucks to haul oil through Santa Barbara County while a pipeline that spilled crude into the Pacific Ocean last month is out of commission.

Exxon Mobil officials have told county officials they want to use a fleet of 5,000-gallon tankers for the job, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Kevin Drude, head of the county’s energy division, said the company proposes to have trucks use Highway 101 daily, around the clock at a rate of eight trucks an hour to get the oil moving to refineries.

Exxon Mobil normally moves crude from three offshore platforms through more than 10 miles of pipeline owned by Plains All American Pipeline.

The movement has been stopped since the pipe ruptured on May 19 and released up to 101,000 gallons west of Santa Barbara. Thousands of gallons flowed down a culvert under Highway 101 and into the ocean at Refugio State Beach.

The trucking proposal is seen as risky by environmentalists.

“We don’t want another disaster,” said Linda Krop, chief counsel for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center.

Glenn Russell, county planning and development director, said his staff will review the proposal and make a decision by Monday. He said he expects a similar request from another oil company, Freeport-McMoRan, which has also been affected by the pipeline shutdown.

Cleanup and investigations into corrosion that resulted in the failure of the pipe have been underway since the spill and there’s no timetable for putting the pipeline back in service.

Exxon Mobil would use the trucks until the pipeline is operational again, said company spokesman Richard Keil.

“We need to move our product by truck to serve the energy needs of Californians and the demands of the refineries we supply,” he said.

Exxon reduced oil production from 30,000 to 8,500 barrels a day and is storing the crude in tanks at Las Flores Canyon near the coast highway.

Russell said the company now has two weeks’ worth of storage space left.

Crude Oil, Fish and wildlife, Pipeline infrastructure, Pipeline inspection, Pipeline rupture, Pipeline transport, Violations of law

Pipeline that spilled oil on California coast badly corroded

Repost from SFGate

Pipeline that spilled oil on California coast badly corroded

By Michael R. Blood and Brian Melley, Associated Press, Wednesday, June 3, 2015 10:50 pm
FILE - This Friday, May 22, 2015 file photo shows signscmarking the beach closed to fishing and harvesting while cleanup crews in the background shovel and rake contaminated sand into bags at El Capitan State Beach, north of Goleta, Calif. Two weeks after an underground pipeline broke on May 19, 2015, crews continued to clean up oil-covered beaches along California’ Central Coast. Photo: Michael A. Mariant, AP / FR96689 AP
FILE – This Friday, May 22, 2015 file photo shows signs marking the beach closed to fishing and harvesting while cleanup crews in the background shovel and rake contaminated sand into bags at El Capitan State Beach, north of Goleta, California two weeks after an underground pipeline broke on May 19, 2015. Crews continued to clean up oil-covered beaches along California’ Central Coast. Photo: Michael A. Mariant, AP

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A pipeline rupture that spilled an estimated 101,000 gallons of crude oil near Santa Barbara last month occurred along a badly corroded section that had worn away to a fraction of an inch in thickness, federal regulators disclosed Wednesday.

The preliminary findings released by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration point to a possible cause of the May 19 spill that blackened popular beaches and created a 9-mile slick in the Pacific Ocean.

The agency said investigators found corrosion at the break site had degraded the pipe wall thickness to 1/16 of an inch, and that there was a 6-inch opening near the bottom of the pipe. Additionally, the report noted that the area that failed was close to three repairs made because of corrosion found in 2012 inspections.

The findings indicate 82 percent of the metal pipe wall had worn away.

“There is pipe that can survive 80 percent wall loss,” said Richard Kuprewicz, president of Accufacts Inc., which investigates pipeline incidents. “When you’re over 80 percent, there isn’t room for error at that level.”

The morning of the spill, operators in the company’s Houston control center detected mechanical issues and shut down pumps on the line. The pumps were restarted about 20 minutes later and then failed, prompting another shutdown of the line.

Restarting the pumps could have led to a rupture, or a break in the line could have caused the pumps to fail, but Kuprewicz cautioned it’s still too soon to determine what caused the failure.

In either case, a hole that size would have leaked at a high rate — even with the pumps off — and may not have been quickly detected by remote operators.

The agency documents said findings by metallurgists who examined the pipe wall thickness at the break site conflicted with the results of inspections conducted May 5 for operator Plains All American Pipeline. Those inspections pinpointed a 45 percent loss of wall thickness in the area of the pipe break, meaning they concluded the pipe was in far better condition.

Government inspectors “noted general external corrosion of the pipe body during field examination of the failed pipe segment,” the report said.

Investigators found “this thinning of the pipe wall is greater than the 45 percent metal loss which was indicated” by the recent Plains All American inspections.

The agency ordered the company to conduct additional research and possible repairs on the line, which has been shut down indefinitely.

Plains All American said in a regulatory filing that there is no timeline to restart the line, which runs along the coast north of Santa Barbara. A company spokeswoman said there’s no estimate yet of the cost of cleanup, which involves nearly 1,200 people.

The agency also ordered restrictions on a second stretch of pipeline, which the company had shut down May 19, restarted, then shut down again on Saturday.

That second line had similar insulation and welds to the line that spilled oil last month. It cannot be started until the company completes a series of steps, including testing.

The company said in a statement that it is committed to working with federal investigators “to understand the differences between these preliminary findings, to determine why the corrosion developed and to determine the cause of the incident.”

Plains said it won’t know the cause until the investigation, including the metallurgical analysis, is concluded.

The company has come under fire from California’s U.S. senators, who issued a statement last week calling the response to the spill insufficient and demanding the pipeline company explain what it did, and when, after firefighters discovered the leak from the company’s underground 24-inch pipe.

A commercial fisherman sued Plains in federal court Monday, alleging the environmental disaster would cause decades of harm to the shore. He is seeking class-action status and damages for business owners who have lost money because of the spill.

As of Tuesday, 36 sea lions, 9 dolphins and 87 birds in the area have died, officials said. Another 32 sea lions, 6 elephant seals and 58 birds were rescued and were being treated.

Popular state beaches and campgrounds polluted by the spill are closed until at least June 18.

Plains All American and its subsidiaries operate 17,800 miles of crude oil and natural gas pipelines across the country, according to federal regulators

The spill is also being investigated by federal, state and local prosecutors for possible violations of law.