Oops. We had a Spill! (Well the Tesoro Pipeline Did.)

Too bad it wasn't a 2-inch hole; he could have his own private gusher...

I am curious as to how much pressure these lines are running at for nearly 21,000 Bbls of oil to have leaked out and how do they not see that in their metering systems?

Just when did Tesoro tell the governor?

The energy I hate seeing lost is all the open flaring of natural gas from those bakken shale wells. And now the industry is saying there will be a price increase this winter. I know that running gas lines to each well would have a cost, but when you see the night satellite photos of how much is being burned, there has to be a solution. I've heard of power generation, but when the coal industry is foolishly being beaten for co2 emissions, why is the EPA looking the other way with this flaring?

night satellite photo

midwestenergynews

There have been a few start up companies and private people wanting to set up large NG powered portable gensets, semi trailer mounted 1 - 2 MW portable co gen units, to burn some of the flare gas off at sites not connected to or actively feeding the pipelines and make electricity but so far what I hear is the EPA has them tied up so bad in regulations they can't do it.

Apparently the EPA will let them flare off all the well gas they want but hell will freeze over before they let anyone run it through a portable scrubber and power an electrical generator to make a profit.

In fact when I was out in the oil fields two and three summers ago it was common to see well sites with 150 - 200 KW LPG or diesel powered gensets hooked up to 1000 gallon bulk tanks running the pump jacks because the EPA would not let them plug into the well and use the flare gas for a fuel source.

I met a few of the people who serviced these gen sets and according to them the whole issue was that the EPA can't confirm that running the raw flare gas through an engine will make more or less pollution at every single well site than just flaring it there so they take it as being worse and restrict it from being used.

That and the proposed portable co gen systems are not seen as stationary power plants and thusly are less regulated or regulatable as to what a normal large scale NG fired power station is. Apparently they do not like the idea of a power producing company not actually having any fixed location generator stations for them to monitor or something silly like that.

The last I heard was that if the wells could be tapped to run portable co gen systems we could easily add the equivalent of building several 1 GW power plants in our state.

Who knows.. Half of what I hear about why they do or don't do thing around here makes too much sense to be real anyway.

I think someone is giving you miss information. That would all be covered under North Dakota's Department of Health Air Quality. There is nothing in their regulations that would prevent the use of ng as long as the gensets met stack testing and individual permit HAP limits.

"Tesoro says no water sources were contaminated, no wildlife was hurt and no one was injured."

Can you say bullshite?

They should have added, "yet".

Don't know about that one, but 1,500 PSI is "normal".

Money buys silence, too, not just votes.

Is this the one that spilled 25.000 barrels. I heard about this on the News..

what a shame to lose all that money (25000*102) = 2.550.000 $$$$

Just goes to show how the media blows things out of proportion. 21,600 becomes 25,000 overnight!

As far as losses go, not realy. They will simply process the exposed soil and get most of it back.

If they can suck it out of the ground from 2 miles down they certainly can get it from the top soils a lot easier!

Actually contaminated soils like that are put through an incinerator to "clean" out the Hydrocarbons. Plus the poor farm won't be able to farm 8 acres of his land.

You forgot to add in clean up costs.

Oops,,, Midnite Oil will be shut down temporarily....

How would a 1/4" hole develop in a pipeline with the high standards that are in general use? It was a 20 year old pipeline - with the hole resulting from corrosive wastage?

Our local refinery here suffers corrosive wastage that results in massive ongoing replacements.

Perhaps 20 years is more than the service life?

A century of 'accepted practice' was put aside by the international community that finally resulted in all oil shipped by sea - being transported in double-hulled vessels.

Maybe it is time to look at "double-wall" oil pipelines.

I don't know how accurately the hole was measured but it seems more likely that it was a 0.22" hole.

Jim

The pipeline is buried.

High plains gophers are tough.

A little perspective, for those that want to kill big oil...

An estimate of current seepage for the entire Coal Oil Point offshore area suggests oil seepage is presently on the order of 20,000 - 30,000 liters/day and gas emission on the order of 1-2 x 105 m3/day. This includes emission of methane, a greenhouse gas (2.4-5 x 1010 g/year), and ROGs which are precursors to smog forming ozone (20-20 metric tons/day). This confirms the notion that seepage is a significant natural source of hydrocarbons in the local environment and strengthens the case that such processes may also be important at the global scale (OCS Study / MMS 2003-2004: Coastal Marine Institute, Marine Science Institute, University of California - Santa Barbara)

This is year in, and year out, 365 days per year...but we must not tap and use it.

http://www.soscalifornia.org/facts.html

If you scroll to the bottom of the page, it is believed that natural methane seepage led to past global warming events.

You are correct to point out the natural seepage. The saddest part is that it is still very poorly monitored. We do not know what sort of releases occur after any large seismic event. There are constant subsea slides that can cause the release from hydrates and last 1000s of years. A widespread release in the ocean is hard to find and harder to measure. Santa Barbara is one of the known areas but do we really know anything about the coast of Chile or Japan or the Indian Ocean.

I do not mean to demean the leakage of a pipeline. That it seems is human carelessness and should not happen. A small leak if undetected for a long period can lead to a large spill. Perhaps new pipelines will or should cost more to provide the measure of safety to assure leaks are quickly detected and contained. The expense of the clean-up and the public relations problems tied to the leak are worth the expense of good monitoring and containment. Can we say a drop in the bucket to Big Oil?

I hate to be the one to bring this up, and I could probably find the link again, but in regard to the Keystone pipeline, the company that was to do the installing was (I think), caught using substandard steel.

http://plainsjustice.org/files/Keystone_XL/Steel/Letter_re_TransCanada_Use_of_Substandard_Steel_2010-06-28.pdf

If big oil doesn't like having a crappy reputation, they should consider not trying to cut corners.

I can't defend them when they get caught at it, and they deserve what they get when things go wrong.

Careful about the source. Plains Justice is set up as an environmental group to oppose all oil, gas, coal or any harvesting of fossil fuels. They will resort to any tactic to discredit any source that supports any oil, gas, or coal harvesting. Keystone XL has yet to be built and there is time to correct and get the proper safety measures required. I do not know how valid the letter can be but I do not believe everything from the internet. The group is not beyond posting bogus trails. It is just one small picture but still be careful. I try not to take sides and am a real sceptic about both. I suspect Keystone XL will be careful on their approach and even go beyond the present standards. However, I would like to see real fool proof safety with automatic monitoring with good response teams. Sure, eventually all infrastructure will collapse like the Roman structures but we need to deal with maintenance of active structures so any damage is very minimal.

I just did a quick google, and grabbed the first link I could find.

Back when I read about it, I'm not even sure if it was this story. It seems like what I read about, wasn't exactly illegal, but unethical, and involved the pipeline people pushing to have the specs changed to a lower grade of steel.

Either way, they know the environmentalists are watching them like hawks; it's just bad for business to do anything subpar.

Interesting link(s). Those "tar whips" are spooky! Above the surface, similar circumstances exist at the Athabaska Tar Sands, which were first discovered by fur traders and explorers as seepage 'streams of tar' at the river banks of the Athabaska River.

I still sympathize with that farmer in North Dakota. Who wants oily crops?

tcmtech-

Depending upon the dimensions, material composition and type of welds many petroleum pipe lines operate legally in excess of 1,500psi. "Average operating pressure" for an "average pipeline" is around 700-800psi.

Don't fret though, the 20,600 Bbls of crude spilled is only 44 tank cars of oil. A train made up to transport this would be about a 1/2 mile long.

If the pipeline was operating at 1,500psi, be thankful more wasn't spilled. If the pipeline was operating at 700-800psi, be thankful it wasn't operating at 1,500psi! Also be thankful that the SCADA system on the pipeline wasn't made by the same people that made the navigational gear for the Exxon-Valdez.

Good Luck, Old Salt