GhostBlogger
The Ruby gas transmission pipeline had a fire this weekend:
“El Paso Corp.’s Ruby interstate natural gas pipeline — which carries
Colorado natural gas to the West Coast — has declared force majeure
after a Dec. 10 fire on a segment of the line in northern Utah, according
to a posting on Ruby’s website.”
This pipeline was put into service just this last summer.
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If there was a tighter gas market, this would have sent gas prices up sharply in the Pacific region. It happened when EPNG had a pipeline blow up in New Mexico from internal corrosion, from a lack of maintenance, in 2000. Not only did the lack of maintenance kill 12 people, natural gas prices shot up in the west at the time.
So, EP’s pipeline group got in trouble for lack of maintenance, yet their natural gas production group made more money for the other division’s blunder.
Well, the Ruby Pipeline is still closed:
http://ebb.cigco.com/ebbmasterpage/Notices/NoticesAutoTable.aspx?code=RUBY&status=Notice&name=Critical%20Notices&sParam1=0495&sParam3=83&sParam14=D&details=Y
I’m glad it’s not the sole supplier of gas to that region!
This pipeline was finished last summer. This is not the first pipeline to have failures when brand new. REX Pipeline had a huge leak within a couple of days of starting up. Something was also mentioned about bad batches of foreign steel pipe in REX & other pipelines. And, Alyeska Pipeline had 7 spills/”incidents” in the first 2 months of operation in 1977, including a fire that burned a pump station down.
And, Alyeska was supposed to be “state of the art” when it was built, but the NTSB found flaws in their pump control room layouts.
So, I don’t trust the notion that the Keystone XL Pipeline will be leak free when & if it starts up.