Archive for the ‘Natural Gas Pipelines’ Category

Preventing Pipeline Ruptures

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

The major cause of natural gas pipeline rupture is not corrosion or material defect but external damage. External damage is the damage to pipeline during digging, pilling, ground work, etc. by heavy equipment such as anchor, bulldozer, excavator, or plough.  Moreover typically the external damage is from third party construction activities ...

How Likely will a Natural Gas Leak Ignite?

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Following the release of natural gas, it can be ignited resulting in fire which in turn can potentially result in an explosion. So how likely will a gas release ignite?If you are interested in the major failure modes for natural gas transmission pipelines reported, please refer to an earlier post ...

Primer on Pipeline Integrity Management

Monday, July 20th, 2009

A few weeks ago I met with Cesar de Leon who is a pipeline safety expert (http://www.pipelinesafetyconsultant.com) - he worked at the DOT Office of Pipeline Safety for over 23 years and currently resides in Boerne, Texas. Cesar was telling me about legal and technical issues arising in the ...

External Damage: The Number 1 Cause of Natural Gas Pipeline Incidents

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

I recently came across a report from European Gas Pipeline Incident Data Group (EGIG) titled "Safety Performance Determines The Acceptability of Cross Country Gas Transmission Systems". The paper presents incident data contributed by six European gas transmission operators over a 30-year period of 1970-2001. An incident within this failure database implies ...