More Colonial pipeline shutdowns ahead
The operator of the 5,500-mile (8,851km) Gulf coast-to-New York Harbor Colonial Pipeline system has stepped up evaluation and repair of its lines, but the company has yet to explain what has bedeviled the system this year.
Colonial has not disclosed when it will replace compromised segments of its 1.3mn b/d Line 1 pipeline outside Atlanta, Georgia, and Pelham, Alabama. Both breaks contributed to the company's worst year for pipeline disruptions attributed to leaks since at least 2002, based on federal data, and its longest Line 1 outage since 1994. Colonial has shut active elements of its system six times this year, compared to four times last year, according to Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration data.
The system has run near maximum rates for four years, leaving few opportunities to shut down without disrupting shipments. Last month's outage in Alabama, which cut supplies through the southeast and raised retail fuel prices, highlights the vulnerability of an essential supply source to the US Atlantic coast amid increased federal and customer scrutiny over access to the system.
"It is incredible … the risk profile we have with one pipeline carrying half the gasoline supply to the east coast — 70pc in many southeastern states," US energy secretary Ernest Moniz said last week.
An estimated 8,000 bl leak near a remote mining site in Alabama last month interrupted the flow of gasoline on Line 1 from 9 September until 22 September. The company built a 500-foot temporary bypass to restore service as crews struggled to dig through gasoline-soaked soil. The bypass may be unprecedented, as neither the company nor federal officials could recall construction of such a project for a major products or crude pipeline.
Colonial sped the Alabama work by pulling crews from another pipeline excavation site in Georgia. The company flagged that section for replacement earlier this year, when Colonial halted Line 1 flows for roughly a day to wrap a new steel sleeve around an older repair that was discovered leaking on 29 February. Workers left the Georgia pipeline exposed, on the verge of removal last month and surrounded by security fence, to focus on restoring service after the Alabama break.
The Alabama bypass temporarily ended Line 1's longest outage since a month-long shutdown in October 1994, when a rain-swollen San Jacinto river rose over its banks and snapped the pipeline near its origin in Pasadena, Texas, leading to a massive fire. Alabama marked Colonial's largest fuel spill since operator error released a 22,800 bl of gasoline into South Carolina's Reedy river in a 1996 rupture.
But the Alabama break struck a much more operationally sensitive section of the system. Shippers in 1994 could still inject gasoline into the pipeline on the other side of the Texas break. The South Carolina release in 1996 occurred where the pipeline approaches the North Carolina border, well past delivery points for most of the southeast.
The Alabama break last month was worse because it shut service about 200 miles past the last injection point at Collins, Mississippi. Shippers had no ready opportunities to load gasoline on the other side of the outage. And the segment involved lay just ahead of the first of numerous branching lines that split off of the main pipes to deliver fuel into northern Alabama, across western Georgia and into Tennessee.
Terminals in Tennessee and through the southeast up into Virginia faced gasoline shortages as crews worked to build the bypass. Marathon Petroleum sent a Jones Act tanker to South Carolina from Texas City, Texas, to deliver fuel around the outage. A Virginia petroleum association member drove 280 miles to retrieve fuel for a distribution center in what the association's head called the worst outage he had seen in 17 years. Retail stations reported running out of fuel.
Such extended outages on the Line 1 and 2 system remain rare. Terminals can prepare for planned outages by stocking up inventory. Crews can typically complete repairs with little disruption. Colonial has increased the use of steel sleeves, such as the workers installed in Georgia, and avoids rushing replacements when possible, the company said.
"It's safer to plan these cut-outs rather than work in an emergency situation," the company said. "Planning also allows us to minimize the disruption to customers by performing multiple maintenance actions while the line is down."
But it also means the company does not yet know the root cause of the releases. Federal regulators ordered Colonial to remove the broken section of pipe in Alabama to analyze why it failed. Colonial planned its own similar analysis on the leaking section of line in Georgia.
The company highlighted its monitoring efforts and overall stable operations. Colonial conducted hundreds of additional, voluntary digs around sections of pipe this year to evaluate its system, with only 374 of the 1,021 digs so far this year required by federal regulators, Colonial said.
But Colonial has not addressed repeated inquiries about why 2016 had seen so many outages. And leaks earlier this year led Colonial to reduce its threshold for what the company will cover with a sleeve.
Комментарии