According to an Associated Press article, Company: Workers followed procedures before blast, they has a survey map showing the pipelines and they called the Texas Railroad Commission. So what happened?
Fred Haag, chief operating officer of Oklahoma-based C&H Power Line Construction Services, said the crew already had a survey map showing gas lines in the area but also made calls to verify the line location at the site in rural Johnson County, about 50 miles southwest of Dallas.
Michael Williams of the Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry, said calls were made to locate the line, a requirement before any company or person does excavation work, but his agency is investigating what was said during those calls.
The man who was killed was thrown 600 feet. He and his wife have a new baby.
Something when terribly wrong.
About Sharon Wilson
Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.
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In the FWST
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Williams said that the railroad commission receives about 1.8 million requests for line locations each year and that of those, about 18,000, or less than 1 percent, involve an incident such as "nicking a line."
AM I THE ONLY ONE THAT FINDS THIS SHOCKING THAT 18,000 "NICKS" ARE acceptable to the TRC? Sounds like we need a better method than hit or miss!
The survey map was wrong. You can see it in the aerial photos and video. A lot of the maps and plats for the TRC are wrong. Things get changed and they never update the maps.
TRC needs to get the pipelines relocated after they have been installed! I've seen 4 wheeler's with GPS tracking systems used by drillers, add a metal detector to follow the pipelines. START WITH THE GAS LINES!
Something like this:
http://www.tinker-rasor.com/tech/methods_submerged.pdf
The other possible issue is that there are so many parallel pipelines there. There were 2 36" pipelines right there. Could be that they located the one and thought they were done. In any case, like Sharon pointed out, the right of way wasn't cleared properly.
Maps to dig around pipelines is an awful idea! People get killed & maimed by using a map to dig around pipelines.
If the TRRC feels maps are good enough, then they're in worse shape than I though.
Looking at the spot with google earth, it looks like there was more than one pipeline parallel, the one that blew was added later off to the side?
Questions of blame arise in wake of fatal Texas pipeline blast.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-pipeline_12bus.ART0.State.Edition1.1abda24.html
It looks like their playing the blame game. Out-sourcing the call centers, not to smart especially when it comes to safety. The mystery of weather or not the pipeline company marked the gas line before the dig should be easy to answer, ask the work crews. TCEQ should take ownership of this problem, with 18,000 pipeline "NICKS" a year, and actually start requiring technology that locates the pipeline instead of using maps.