At the proposed Portland project, liquefied propane would be
transferred into pressurized rail cars as shown here. Once here, the propane would be transferred
from train cars into pressurized bullet-shaped tanks like those at gas
stations, then into huge refrigerated holding tanks, and then into oceangoing
ships.
MARCH 10, 2015
PEMBINA PIPELINE CORP., HAYDEN ISLAND IN NORTH PORTLAND, OR
Community debate is heating up over how safe — or how
dangerous — a propane terminal might be that’s proposed near Hayden Island in
North Portland.
Pembina Pipeline Corp., the Canadian terminal developer,
hosts an all-day workshop today to review safety features planned at the $500
million export terminal at the Port of Portland’s Terminal 6. In front of
perhaps 35 technical experts and city and neighborhood representatives, Pembina
may divulge, for the first time, preliminary findings on potential “hazard
zones” surrounding the project — areas of North Portland that might be affected
by gas leaks and explosions at the terminal, said Pembina’s local project
manager Eric Dyck.
“Nothing else matters” if the facility isn’t safe, Dyck said
at a briefing for reporters last Wednesday.
Today’s workshop, which is closed to the media and general
public, comes as nervous Hayden Island residents and environmental groups
circulate a “white paper” by island residents that depicts five potential
“threat zones” surrounding the site. The white paper was researched and written
by physicist A. Roxburgh, computer systems architect Ron Ebersole and professor
of doctoral studies Timme Helzer, collaborating with others in the Northwest
Citizen Science Initiative.
The authors describe a potential accident where propane
leaks and then ignites from one pressurized rail car or bullet-shaped storage
tank, sending flying shrapnel that sets off a domino reaction among 100 rail
cars, storage tanks and other equipment.
The white paper concludes anyone within one mile of the
propane terminal might be killed by such an accident, known as a Boiling Liquid
Expanding Vapor Explosion, or BLEVE. Those within 1.5 miles might be exposed to
serious injury or burns to people and buildings; anyone within 2.9 miles might
be exposed to ruptured eardrums and shattered glass, and shrapnel might shoot
out at high speeds for up to 6.7 miles in any direction.
Dyck, Pembina’s vice president for marine terminals,
dismissed the white paper’s scenario as alarmist. This guy is a paid biased person and his comments should be dismissed. According to Murphy’s law, everything that is
possible to occur, will eventually occur.
Explosions and fires will happen.
He should be dismissed, as the same thing the BP Horizon people were
saying prior to the Gulf disaster.
“A BLEVE’s just not going to happen,” he said. What a moronic statement. BLEVE will happen, as the measures he
suggests could fail. That would require
an extraordinary amount of significant heat that goes totally undetected for
several hours, he said, detailing Pembina’s safeguards designed to prevent that
from occurring. In our opinion, the
proposed facility should plan for a BLEVE event and how to deal with the catastrophe
it will cause.
The people most vulnerable to an accident would be Pembina
employees, and perhaps workers at the adjacent Honda terminal, Dyck said. The
nearest residents live at the Class Harbor floating homes on East Hayden
Island, 1.4 miles to 1.7 miles away, he said.
The worst-case scenario at the Portland site, Dyck said,
would be a four-foot hole in a giant refrigerated propane tank holding up to 23
million gallons of propane.
“There’s no historic failure, period” from those tanks,
which are made of double-walled steel, Dyck said. “There’s hundreds of these
tanks in existence” in the United States, he said.
But a series of oil-train derailments and explosions has
caused heightened fears among the public, even though propane is shipped in
safer rail cars and has a reputation as a safe fuel to handle.
Pembina didn’t ease such fears when it kept dodging
questions from neighbors, environmentalists and reporters about the potential
“blast zone” of its propane terminal. However, Dyck was pressed to answer the
question at a Jan. 13 public hearing before the Portland Planning and
Sustainability Commission. Dyck testified that preliminary estimates for
another proposed propane terminal on the West Coast were for a 300-yard blast
zone.
On Wednesday, he said that referred to the inner, most
dangerous zone, that might cause fatalities.
Pembina actually relies on a third party to determine hazard
zones, Dyck said. That will be DNV GL, a Norwegian company that boasts it’s
“the leading technical adviser to the global oil and gas industry.”
After today’s review of safety information, DNV will prepare
a draft Quantitative Risk Assessment, evaluating every possible catastrophe or
accident at the site — including a potential BLEVE. That risk assessment,
including hazard zones, will be presented to the Planning and Sustainability
Commission at its March 17 work session, Dyck said.
Then a final report will be readied for the commission’s
April 7 public hearing on the project. At that time, commissioners may make a
recommendation on the terminal project and forward it to the Portland City
Council, which has the final say.
Of course nothing is absolutely safe. Explosions happen all the time from lack of
maintenance, human errors, failed components, adverse weather conditions,
etc. As soon as they have a contingency
plan and appropriate funding to pay for the damages they cause, they should be
able to build the terminal. Good luck to
them and to the the community. They will
both needed.
Safety plans
Here’s how Pembina plans to address safety concerns at its
proposed North Portland propane terminal:
Fires: “You don’t fight a propane fire,” said Eric Dyck,
Pembina’s local project manager. Neither water nor chemical foam is effective.
Instead, firefighters try to contain the fire by dousing surrounding items. A
large on-site water tank is planned. The Port of Portland also can extract more
water from the Columbia River slough alongside the terminal.
Fire detection: A series of automated “fire eyes” will
constantly monitor for fires through an infrared heat-detection system.
Gas leaks: Automated “sniffers” will be deployed to detect
gas by mechanically smelling leaks.
Earthquakes: Pembina must meet Oregon’s updated 2014 seismic
code, so the terminal can withstand a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the Oregon
Coast and a 7.0 magnitude earthquake at the site. Two large refrigerated
propane storage tanks will be buttressed with 36-inch-diameter pilings that are
dug 160 feet deep. To stabilize the site and make sure the riverbank doesn’t
give way, Pembina will create a massive foundation attached to below-ground
bedrock: a 3,000-foot-long wall that’s 120 feet wide and 100 feet deep.
Floods: The site is on a floodplain, so the facility must
withstand 1 percent floods, the most severe type that occur, on average, once
per century.
Terrorism: The entire site is gated, with limited access,
and under the authority of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Waterways: The U.S. Coast Guard controls safety and security
in the Columbia River and slough. Canoers and kayakers will be kept away when
ships are being offloaded. We are talking about a lot of costs that will be paid by the taxpayers. So these people they better construct this facility with all the safety requirements the people want.
Trains: Propane will be shipped in pressurized form in U.S.
DOT 112 trains that are no more than six years old. U.S. DOT 112 trains are
much safer than the trains being used to transport Bakken crude oil.
It is funny how these people do not even mention the word
explosion in their plans. We believe
this is alarming. Such an arrogant and
dismissive attitude has led to all the man-made disasters in our industrial
history. We should plan for explosions
and catastrophic events, because it is not if they happen, but when they
happen.
Pipeline people and companies should not be trusted at face
value. There should be an independent
third-party oversight of their operations because these companies use their own
biased consultants to do their design and construction and operation. To minimize the number of disasters, we need
third party oversight. The feds are
influenced by the special interests and are ineffective. Look what happened to the crude and gas
pipelines and trains and semi-truck explosions and fires and deaths and environmental pollution.
Source: portlandtribune.com