Archive for the ‘Natural Gas Pipelines’ Category
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
California senators introduced a new bill on pipeline safety - The Strengthening Pipeline Safety and Enforcement Act of 2011.
A few key elements in the proposed legislature are:
Double the number of federal pipeline safety inspectors.
Deployment of electronic or remote-control valves capable of automatically shutting off the gas in a fire or other ...
Posted in Natural Gas Pipelines, Pipelines, Regulations | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 14th, 2011
NTSB has issued seven safety recommendations following the September, 2010 San Bruno incident in California.
#1. To PHMSA: Inform pipeline operators about circumstances leading up-to and consequences of pipeline rupture at San Bruno and NTSB's recommendations.
#2. To PG&E: Search records to identify all the gas transmission lines (in class 3 & 4 locations, ...
Posted in Fires and explosions, Incident Investigation, Incidents, Natural Gas Pipelines, Pipelines, Process Safety, Risk Management | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
Natural gas pipelines have caused incidents leading to fatalities, injuries, and property damages.
To be precise, there have been an average of 50 serious gas pipeline incidents every year in the U.S. between 1990-2009 (Source: http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/comm/reports/safety/SerPSI.html?nocache=4823) resulting in more than 300 fatalities. Majority of the reported gas incidents have occurred on the gas ...
Posted in Failure Data, Inherent Safety, Natural Gas Pipelines | 4 Comments »
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 ...
Posted in Failure Data, LNG, Natural Gas Pipelines | 1 Comment »
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 ...
Posted in Failure Data, Fires and explosions, Natural Gas Pipelines | No Comments »
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 ...
Posted in Natural Gas Pipelines, Regulations | 1 Comment »
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 ...
Posted in Failure Data, Fires and explosions, Natural Gas Pipelines | 1 Comment »
