Posted on 11/01/2013 6:01:49 AM PDT by thackney
A lightning strike may have caused a pipeline rupture that spilled more than 20,000 barrels of oil in a North Dakota wheat field, federal regulators said in a report issued Thursday.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said a preliminary investigation of the Tesoro Corp. pipeline break “points to a strong electrical discharge as the cause of the failure.”
Damon Hill, a spokesman for the agency, said a final determination as to the exact cause has not been made. The agency based its initial findings on mechanical and metallurgical analysis of a section of the 6-inch diameter steel pipeline that runs underground about 35 miles from Tioga to a rail facility outside of Columbus, near the Canadian border, he said.
“It’s possible it may have been a lighting strike,” Hill said. “It’s possible it could have struck the pipeline or another conduit near the pipeline, such as a fence.”
Tesoro has said the hole in the 20-year-old pipeline was a quarter-inch in diameter. North Dakota regulators previously had said the hole may have been caused by corrosion.
“The cause of the electrical discharge is under investigation,” Tesoro spokeswoman Elizabeth Watters said Thursday.
The break in the pipeline happened in a remote area, and officials said no water was contaminated or wildlife hurt.
The preliminary results of the break were published in a safety order issued Thursday that sets conditions for Tesoro to restart the pipeline. The order requires the company to perform frequent aerial and ground inspections and install additional leak detection equipment.
The North Dakota Health Department was told about the spill on Sept. 29, after a farmer whose combine’s tires were coated in crude discovered oil gurgling from the ground in his field in the northwest corner of the state. Although the state initially thought just 750 barrels of oil was involved, it turned out to be one of the largest spills in North Dakota history — an estimated 20,600 barrels covering 7.3 acres of land, or about the size of seven football fields.
One barrel of oil is 42 gallons, and the amount that spilled near Tioga would fill more than 30 rail tanker cars.
Tesoro estimated it would cost $4 million to clean up the spill.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said sections of the old pipe were sent to a lab for analysis. The agency said new pipe has been installed and tested, and pressure and flow detection systems have been installed.
In addition to the corrective measures included in the safety order, the agency has required Tesoro to submit a restart plan for the entire pipeline segment. Hill said his agency could allow Tesoro to restart the pipeline before the final investigation is done, if Tesoro meets corrective measures.
Watters said the San Antonio-based company does not have a timeline to restart the pipeline.
“We’re continuing to work on getting restart approval,” she said.
Perhaps, and only a guess with no info, corrosion from a break in the pipeline coating allowed enough iron-oxide material in the soil to help create a path to the weakened pipeline at that point.
Maybe, or maybe not...
The break in the pipeline happened in a remote area, and officials said no water was contaminated or wildlife hurt.
As if those two items were important relative to the farmers field and livelihood in question. Yea, I know, seven and a half acres.
One would also ask what the capabilities of pipeline monitoring are these days, how big a hole before someone is able to detect the leak? Thackney would know or know where to find out.
Warm air clashing with cooler air....... Algore just might be on to something. I think it’s called profit from fools buying your snake oil.
If pipelines are not flown as many of the majors are regularly flown over for monitoring, it can be difficult to discover relatively small leaks before they become big leaks.
Fly-over is for more than looking for oil on the ground. They will notice and investigate a dead/dying vegetation along the right-of-way that could indicate a below grade seeping into the soil.
Also the make notice of construction equipment that had not previously notified the pipeline company as required if digging in the area. Those will have someone quickly driving out.
But measurement in and out of pipeline are not perfectly accurate. It can be difficult to see the difference quickly until a trend line develops.
Typically, the best prevention is proper maintenance. The pipelines have corrosion prevention system like impressed current rectifiers, sacrificial anodes, etc. Inspection and noticing changes of those along with smart-pigging for internal measurement can prevent many problems before they spill.
My experience over the last 20 years with how humans react
when pipeline and/or storage tank inventory numbers don’t match up:
- first they suspect the meter:
“that can’t be right”,
“check the math in the spreadsheet”,
“the meter must need to be calibrated”.
- second they suspect other people:
“somebody is not reading the meter correctly,
“somebody must not be reporting all of their usages”,
“somebody must be stealing product”.
- finally after at least a few weeks and perhaps a few months,
they have to face the fact that there is a leak somewhere,
and then they have to go and find it.
It brings back memories when you talk about flying the lines.
As kids, we got parachute drops of candy from “The Flying Santa Clause”.
-
The Tuscaloosa News - Dec 15, 1957
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19571215&id=hGUeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5JkEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6083,2406849
-
20,000 barrels, 6” line, and it’s only a 1/4” hole.
It had to start as a pinhole and fluid cutting enlarged it to 1/4” over time.
Corrosion would probably be a bigger hole as the fluid cutting would cut the thin wall from corrosion faster than nominal wall.
If it’s seamless pipe it’s probably in the weld and someone missed it with the X-ray. Pin hole, thick wall, slow fluid cut.
If it’s pipe with a weld seam same thing. Pin hole in seam, thick wall, slow fluid cut.
That has not been my experience in decades around pipelines.
If it’s seamless pipe it’s probably in the weld and someone missed it with the X-ray.
An initial construction defect that did not develop a problem until after after 20 years?
With 20,000 barrels there had to be fluid cutting over time.
How much cutting and over how much time we don’t know.
It took time to spread over that large an area.
With a 1/4’ hole all at once, it’s hard to believe oil wouldn’t have been on the surface much quicker.
It may not have been an actual “defect” as it was an “imperfection”, two completely different things when your talking about pipe inspection.
Weld “imperfection” isn’t any different than any other “imperfection”.
It isn’t a problem initially but over time it can develop into a problem.
For example a small pit on the ID isn’t a problem, it’s an imperfection that will meet the specs, but over time swirling fluid inside the pipe can cause it to expand and deepen until it is a problem 20 years later.
Pipe inspection isn’t 100%, even when pressure testing, you can still miss it.
If you notice nearly every old building has lightening rods. Some have complex lightening grounding systems in addition to it. Maybe they knew something +80 years ago that we forgot to add to our structures as we build them.
Probably, or possible a few thousand amps of electrical current blew a hole in a spot in the pipe.
With a 1/4’ hole all at once, it’s hard to believe oil wouldn’t have been on the surface much quicker.
This is a remote area where the spill was not discovered until the farmer drove his equipment into the field. We don't know how long it took to accumulate since we don't know when it started.
May have, or the leak may have attracted the lightening.
Lightening seems to be attracted to dead or dying plants.
Where I live there is number of dead trees that survived hurricanes Rita and Ike but over time they died.
Those trees are lightening magnets when they were still alive but on the way to dying.
Same thing may have happened.
Dying trees are lightning magnets because they have reached their full life span and are the tallest trees in the area. Your logic is sadly missing. Are you suggesting that because oil develops from dead vegetation that there is some relationship?
I can easily see corrosion from a break in the fusion bond epoxy coating combined with insufficient cathodic protection putting iron into the soil to increase the chances of the path of current for lightning.
That said, it still sounds very unlikely.
I would expect a lightning strike into a pool of crude to result in quite a fire. Most crudes cannot be lite by a match but a lightning strike is going to be vaporizing heat and would be burning.
Nope, they are not always the tallest tree because they have lost their tops from the hurricanes, which is why they are dying to begin with.
Even brush that has been sprayed an is dying will attract lightening even when there is a 100’ tree close by.
“Are you suggesting that because oil develops from dead vegetation that there is some relationship?”
How in the world did you dream that up from what I said?
The oil leak kills the plants.
So how long does it take for 20,000 barrels to leak out of a 1/4” hole at the pressure of the line?
Check the weather at that time.
A long time.
Check the weather at that time.
What time? They don't know the week this started let alone the day and time.
I still have a hard time believing the lightning. But I suspect there is more info that what we have read for them to put that out a possibility. Melting of steel? solidified soil?
Lightening would be on or near the bottom of the list IMO.
There may have been a small leak that lightening opened up, but I doubt it.
I also think with ID corrosion pitting alone there would be a bigger hole after 20,000 barrels.
Maybe they knew something +80 years ago that we forgot to add to our structures as we build them.
Now if the fuse was blown, the rod attracted the lighting the shortest path for the electricity is some where else in the building, not directly to ground, what happens?
Another sounds good until you think about it............... Lighting rods have their place and use but not every where.
The trees that lose their tops are already rotting from the inside out. otherwise the whole tree would fall over. Trees that do that are usually what are called apex trees. They are the first trees to sprout after a fire or lightning strike. The grow fast and tall and provide cover for the slower growing, longer lived trees that make up the forest. It’s a natural life cycle that has nothing to do with oil.
Hurricane winds don’t care if a tree is rotten or not.
Hurricane winds will take the top out of a live tree just as fast if not faster than a dead tree. The more leaves on the limb the more likely it is to come down from the wind.
Dead limbs have no leaves to act as a sail and catch the wind, the wind can go around them easier. That’s not to say dead limbs wont come down, they will, but a lot of times dead limbs that aren’t completely rotten will still be in the tree after a hurricane has pretty much stripped live limbs from the tree.
I never said dead or dying trees had anything to do with oil other than a pipeline oil leak will kill plants.
Anything else you read into it is something you just made up in your own little head.
Maybe you’re not aware of it, but flying a pipeline looking for dead vegetation, it’s called a brown spot, is one way to find a leak in an oil/gas pipeline.
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