THE GATHERING
STORM: THOUSANDS OF MILES OF UNREGULATED OR LOOSELY REGULATED GAS PIPELINES HAVE
BEEN CONSTRUCTED OR ARE BEING CONSTRUCTED WITHOUT ADEQUATE OVERSIGHT AND/OR
FOLLOWUP INSPECTIONS
The precipitous drop in the price of the oil and gas
futures is a prime example of the perennial problem plaguing the oil and gas
industry: very little oversight or regulation of these operations takes place; when it does, it focuses on the end result,
such as minimize environmental impacts or minimize injury to workers and
property damage.
Most of the time, planning and pipeline safety standards
and testing and maintenance and inspection is an afterthought and most of the
time the result of some catastrophe: explosion, fire, discovered leak, loss of
life and so on. It is has been for many
years known in the engineering profession that the pipeline companies are “very
dirty” and that they perform very little maintenance or monitoring. After the spectacular explosion s of the pipelines
during the last few years, only then did these pipeline operators were forced
to increase their inspections.
The reason is that most of these pipelines are not
regulated. At other times, the pipelines are not properly marked or are not marked at all. So may incidents have been caused over the years because the pipelines are not properly marked or are not marked on time.
Test borings we install near
the right of way of these pipelines always show screamingly high levels of
methane. We do know that they leak
(about 3 percent of natural gas goes undetected as lost through leaks or blow
offs, etc.). These leaks are the result
of aging and lack of proper installation, especially the lack of proper
backfill, defective material, lack of proper inspection and maintenance, and so
on. The lack of backfill is pretty much
the biggest joke in the pipeline construction industry, because there is almost
none.
Could you ever imagine placing a water pipe into the
ground without proper backfill and then backfilling it with all the rocky
excavation material? Absolutely no. However, this is how the pipeline operators
and their contractors/engineers function.
The pipeline companies simply throw into the excavation trench all the
rocky material they excavated to avoid bringing in proper backfill. The result is the damage to the exterior corrosion
protection of these pipes.
We hold our fingers crossed that all these unregulated
and/or not properly constructed or inspected pipelines that have been
constructed and continue to be constructed will not end up being the gathering
storm that will cause mayhem in rural and more populated areas. We are simply suspect of the process where
the wolf has been placed in charge of watching the health of the sheep.
