Monitoring Spills and Identifying Risks
Wednesday, October 10, 2012 @ 1:17 PM
Prince George, B.C.- The Joint Review Panel Hearings continue in Prince George with questions about probability of a major spill and the length of time it would take before a spill registered on monitoring equipment.
According to initial reports, the probability of a spill in the Alberta leg of the pipeline was rated at one in every 669 years, while the probability of a major spill was rated as one in 1058 years through the Coastal Mountains. When asked why the probability of spill was nearly 2 times more likely in the Alberta flatlands than the Coastal mountains, Enbridge ‘s experts responded saying the information was developed early in the research of the pipeline route, and is outdated.
On the issue of spill monitoring, Enbridge says there are overlapping methods to detect leaks by reductions in flow and there are other means available to a company to ensure the line is monitored. Enbridge says even with a scenario that has “many, many obstacles” including remoteness, high snow pack and inability to access the site, “when you look at all the probabilities of those things occurring,(at the same time) they are very, very remote.”
There were also some questions about the seismic activity along the Coast, with some seismological reports suggesting there have been earthquakes in the region, although the data is incomplete and there is no way to pinpoint the epicentres of that activity or the level of risk that activity might have on a pipeline.
Comments
Could they not address the question other than its remote? fact is they know just don’t want to say it, if it happens in the winter or in spring bad weather can’t really do anything.Just have to view the probability’s of ever having a spill over the benefits…. really come on people.These guys are clowns with way to much money, probabilitys my ass.
Am I understanding “their” probability correctly: It is more likely to have a spill event on flat level and stable ground than it is in rough mountainous terrain that is known to have everything from avalanches to earthquakes as well as extremes of weather?
Wow, they actually think someone would believe it.
“the probability of a spill in the Alberta leg of the pipeline was rated at one in every 669 years”
How long is the Alberta leg?
We know that Enbridge has had more than 1 spill in 669 years. In fact, they have had many spills in 20 years.
A rate like that has to be given related to something other than just frequency. It has to be frequency per km.
So, in relationship to a 500km section on the flat lands, what is the expected spill frequency compared to the actual spill frequency?
What are the factors which influence the frequency? Pressure? workmanship? Operating temperature? Altitude? Soil stability? Pipe material? produc being moved? Velocity of the product?
I could go on and on.
If those are the actual responses to the questions, the entire thing is a farce!!!! A grade 11 physics student should know better ….. then again, this is 2012 …. :-(
What a joke Enbridge is…They have hsd near 1000 spills in the last decade…What are those odds???
100,000 million years worth of spills in the last decade..From Wikipedia
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Spills and violations
Using data from Enbridge’s own reports, the Polaris Institute calculated that 804 spills occurred on Enbridge pipelines between 1999 and 2010. These spills released approximately 168,645 barrels (26,812.4 m3) of crude oil into the environment.[12]
On July 4, 2002 an Enbridge pipeline ruptured in a marsh near the town of Cohasset, Minnesota in Itasca County, spilling 6,000 barrels (950 m3) of crude oil. In an attempt to keep the oil from contaminating the Mississippi River, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources set a controlled burn that lasted for 1 day and created a smoke plume about 1-mile (1.6 km) high and 5 miles (8.0 km) long.[13]
In 2006, there were 67 reportable spills totaling 5,663 barrels (900.3 m3) on Enbridge’s energy and transportation and distribution system; in 2007, there were 65 reportable spills totaling 13,777 barrels (2,190.4 m3) [14]
On March 18, 2006, approximately 613 barrels (97.5 m3) of crude oil were released when a pump failed at Enbridge’s Willmar terminal in Saskatchewan.[15] According to Enbridge, roughly half the oil was recovered.
On January 1, 2007 an Enbridge pipeline that runs from Superior, Wisconsin to near Whitewater, Wisconsin cracked open and spilled ~50,000 US gallons (190 m3) of crude oil onto farmland and into a drainage ditch.[16] The same pipeline was struck by construction crews on February 2, 2007, in Rusk County, Wisconsin, spilling ~201,000 US gallons (760 m3) of crude, of which only about 87,000 gallons were recovered. Some of the oil filled a hole more than 20 feet (6.1 m) deep and contaminated the local water table.[17][18]
In April 2007, roughly 6,227 barrels (990.0 m3) of crude oil spilled into a field downstream of an Enbridge pumping station near Glenavon, Saskatchewan.[15]
In 2009, Enbridge Energy Partners, a US affiliate of Enbridge Inc., agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle a lawsuit brought against the company by the state of Wisconsin for 545 environmental violations.[19] In a news release from Wisconsin’s Department of Justice, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said “…the incidents of violation were numerous and widespread, and resulted in impacts to the streams and wetlands throughout the various watersheds.”[20] The violations were incurred while building portions of the company’s Southern Access pipeline, a project to transport crude from the oil sands region in Alberta to Chicago.
In January 2009 an Enbridge pipeline leaked about 4,000 barrels (640 m3) of oil southeast of Fort McMurray at the company’s Cheecham Terminal tank farm. Most of the spilled oil was contained within berms but about 1% of the oil, about 40 barrels (6.4 m3), sprayed into the air and coated nearby snow and trees.[21]
On January 2, 2010, Enbridge’s Line 2 ruptured near Neche, North Dakota, releasing about 3,784 barrels of crude oil, of which only 2,237 barrels of were recovered.[22][18]
April 2010 an Enbridge pipeline ruptured spilling more than 9.5 barrels (1.51 m3) of oil in Virden, Manitoba, which leaked into the Boghill Creek which eventually connects to the Assiniboine River.[23]
July 2010, a leaking pipeline spilled an estimated 843,444 US gallons (3,192.78 m3) of crude oil into Talmadge Creek leading to the Kalamazoo River in southwest Michigan on Monday, July 26 near Marshall, Michigan.[24][25] A United States Environmental Protection Agency update of the Kalamazoo River spill concluded the pipeline rupture “caused the largest inland oil spill in Midwest history” and reported the cost of the cleanup at $36.7 million (US) as of November 14, 2011.[24] The cleanup is unfinished as of July 2012.[26] PHMSA raised concerns in a Corrective Action Order (CAO) about numerous anomalies that had been detected on this pipeline by internal line inspection tools, yet Enbridge had failed to check a number of those anomalies in the field.[27] The Michigan spill affected more than 50 kilometres of waterways and wetlands and about 320 people reported symptoms from crude oil exposure.[28] The NTSB said at US$800 million it was the costliest onshore spill cleanup in U.S. history.[29] The NTSB found Enbridge knew of a defect in the pipeline five years before it burst.[30]
On September 9, 2010, a rupture on Enbridge’s Line 6A pipeline near Romeoville, Illinois released an estimate 7,500 barrels (1,190 m3) of oil into the surrounding area.
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This is why they will never be permitted to build this pipeline, they have been spinning and, in my opinion lying their faces off every step of the way.
So many pipeline and geotechnical experts on this blog site…
It does not need an expert…… one of the problems in today’s society, common sense is not that common anymore.
You know, making a statement like your JB, does zilch to further debate.
Tell me why I am full of BS because I need at least one more parameter to define a meaningful risk and give the reasons why, and you would display you have common sense. But you fail to do that.
A risk factor such as the number minor, medium, major spills per million barrels transported would be an acceptable one, for instance.
I do not have the faintest clue what the “alberta leg” delivers as far as product goes, as far as volume goes, or what the age of the line is or the quality of the pipe, etc.
Anyway, I have gone there in a previous post, so do not need to repeat myself.
Too many people find too many thing too complex and run around like dummies simply because they are too lazy, not because they are not smart enough.
[url]
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/10/10/bc-northern-gateway-hearing-safety.html?cmp=rss%5B/url%5D
from the linked article:
“B.C. Environment Minister Terry Lake issued a statement late Wednesday saying the government is “extremely concerned” about the answers heard at the hearings.
“The responses from Enbridge/Northern Gateway to cross-examination by our legal counsel are too often incomplete and lacking in commitment,” Lake said. “Their answers suggest that the company is not taking the very real concerns of British Columbians seriously.”
“Callele (Enbridge) said there would be five overlapping leak detection systems on the twin pipelines that would carry diluted bitumen to the tanker port in Kitimat, B.C., and condensate from Kitimat back to Bruderheim, Alta., including aerial surveillance, FOOT PATROLS (LOL), and 132 monitored pressure valves along the route.
“We will have one of the best instrumented pipeline systems not only in North America, but probably the world,” Callele told the panel.
“Jones (BC) pointed out that according to U.S. data, there were 31 leaks from Enbridge pipelines in that country since 2002, and six of the 10 largest spills by volume in that time were from Enbridge pipelines. Of those six, none were detected by Enbridge leak detection systems, Jones said.”
A summer job I used to have while at University was to work with the Army to repair leaks in a buried pressurized communication conduit between Ottawa and Carp where the âDiefenbunkerâ was. The cable was buried about 3 to 4 feet underground. It was âunder attackâ from animals such as gophers, among other things. The conduit was pressurized and pressure sensors would indicate pressure drops at a control station which set off alarms. By knowing the pressure variations we plotted the approximate location of a conduit break within about 100 feet or so.
We then drove/walked to that spot and with modern tools such as picks and shovels and muscled young guys, we dug until we located the leak, which was then fixed. Sometimes the gophers had gotten access to the cables which were typically 50 pairs. That operation took many hours to fix the conductors and patch the conduit, bring the pressure back up and make sure the patch was 100% before it was reburied.
Add 40+ years, move that to the transport of fluid though buried pipes, and lo and behold the detection system described for the Enbridge pipeline still counts on pressure monitoring in the pipe and foot patrols â¦â¦
With all the transducer capacity we have these days to monitor the hell out of such a transportation system, feeding the data to control monitoring stations where the data is analyzed by computers and displayed in pretty colours on flat screens, and leak locations and volumes identified, it raises extreme confidence in me to see we are still relying on such ancient technology …… NOT!!
So, JB, where is your expertise? What experience and knowledge of such things can you bring to the discussion?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/10/10/bc-northern-gateway-hearing-safety.html?cmp=rss
New technoloy in gas leak detection at work ….
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDR9ekzXsNA&NR=1&feature=endscreenp/url]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDR9ekzXsNA&NR=1&feature=endscreenp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=ljwiCHRW0-8&NR=1
A promotional animation for leak detection using acoustic sensors instead of pressure sensors. Notice that the basic methodology is still the same – sensors some distance apart and interpolation of that data to pinpoint the leak to the best of the systems ability, adding the capacity for remote shut down.
Once one understands the basic principles, it is no longer rocket science.
Must be 10,000 kms worth of Pipes in the Peace Country and Horn river Basin. Just wondering where all the paranoid posts are about the frequency of spills and leaks and what the whining left is going to do about it?
Using Google and cutting and pasting will only accomplish so much.
Funny how the Chinese government is buying into the Tumbler Ridge coal mines and nary a word from our resident whiners.
I wonder how BC gets its Natural Gas and Oil to market in the Peace Country?Horn River Basin and how much of the provincial revenues were from Oil and Gas royalties?
How much revenue did the citizens of Alberta realize from the transit of said resources through their province and onto the states?
Just google it Gus: It will be a template for how Alberta should conduct business with BC.
gus: “It does not need an expert”
Actually it does. The problem with this complex proposal is that very few people understand it, but feel they know enough to make absolute judgments based on a few select clips from a news article.
gus: “Too many people find too many thing too complex and run around like dummies simply because they are too lazy, not because they are not smart enough.”
This I agree with.
Sounds like Enbridge has some awesome experts JohnnyB. Looks like a gong show to me. But then again I’m not an expect on gong shows.
Styxxx you are comparing a Jack Russel to a Pit Bill. Both are dogs but both bites do different damage.
I don’t mind the links and copy paste Gus, it saves me time.
Look at a map with ALL the existing pipelines, let alone what is yet to be built from hundreds, if not thousands of wells. The N.East of BC has easily more sq kms of pipes than ANY line that would cross the province. Not too mention the huge amount of economic activity that is all over a UNESCO site.
I mean the scale of “damage” being done by fracking, pipelines linking wells and pumping and compressor stations…The construction of roads to every well site and clearing of all trees. The uprooting of fauna is massive.
I just don’t see why the environmentalists of convenience, pretend a pipeline corridor right-of-way is in any way comparable to the practices in NE BC.
I`m sure Enbridge told communities in Michigan, and in Red Deer, and Illinois and the site of their other 1000 oil spills that the odds were..
A leak every 600 to 1000 years..
What century are we in?…2512
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