Texas Eastern 30 inch Natural Gas Pipeline explodes of unknown cause

From an Article by Bill Estep, Mike Stunson, and Rebekah Alvey, Lexington Herald-Leader, August 02, 2019

The NTSB is investigating after a gas pipeline exploded, destroying homes, killing a woman and injuring several others early Thursday in Lincoln County, authorities said.

The explosion occurred in the Indian Camp Trailer Park about 1:20 a.m. just outside Junction City, Kentucky, and flames shot up 300 feet in the air, according to Lincoln County Emergency Management director Don Gilliam.

The fire — that could be seen dozens of miles away in Lexington and other communities — engulfed some homes and damaged others while residents fled. Nine homes were destroyed or extensively damaged, Gilliam said.

“We are immensely sorry,” said Devin Hotzel, spokesman for Enbridge, the parent company of Texas Eastern that owns the line. He apologized during a meeting Thursday night to help affected residents with their immediate housing, food and medication needs.

Lisa Denise Derringer, 58, was killed, the Lincoln County coroner’s office told WKYT. An autopsy was scheduled for Thursday, Kentucky State Police Trooper Robert Purdy said. Her daughter, Candy Ellis, wrote on Facebook that her mother called in her last moments. “She called me but couldn’t speak this morning,” Ellis said. “I have to believe that her heart was at peace when I was calling her name.”

At least five were injured in the blast, Gilliam said. The injuries did not appear to be life-threatening. Ephraim McDowell Regional Medical Center in Danville treated five injured victims and four were released, a spokesperson said.

Kentucky State Police Trooper Robert Purdy describes how a deputy rescued two people who were in danger after a gas pipeline explosion in Lincoln County Ky., on Aug. 1, 2019.

One of the injured was a Lincoln County sheriff’s deputy who helped rescue an elderly man and woman. “Without him being there at the right time, we could have had more casualties than what we had,” Purdy said of the deputy.

Although up to seven people were unaccounted for in the early hours after the blast, by noon Thursday, all had been located, Purdy said. The fire was out by 8 a.m., Purdy said. Anything within 500 yards of the fire and explosion had some kind of damage, he added.

Of the nine hardest hit homes, five were destroyed and four were extensively damaged. More received less serious damage. Others were uninhabitable temporarily with water and electric service turned off. Enbridge will provide assistance, including temporary housing, to victims if needed, Hotzel said.

”There is just nothing left,” Gilliam said of some of the homes.

Initial reports indicated a gas line had ruptured, triggering the blast. Victims were amazed they survived the inferno. “It was either stay and burn up or run and burn up,” said Denver Coulter whose home burned. “I still don’t see how we got out alive.”

Judy Gooch was jolted from her bed by a “horrendous” roaring sound at her mobile home and when she looked outside it was like daylight, she said. The home was shaking. “We just saw flames shooting up over the roof. The air was so hot it would take your breath,” Gooch said. She and her 16-year-old granddaughter escaped in their car. “There was a lot of people running from the fire,” and to the road, she said.

New Hope Baptist Church served as a shelter for fire victims and those who left their surrounding houses in fear after the mobile home park blast. Initally, about 75 people were sent to the church, Lincoln County Deputy Jim Vines said. A 1.5 mile stretch of U.S. 127 between Junction City and Hustonville also was temporarily closed, Vines added.

Some affected residents at Thursday night’s meeting were petrified to return to their homes and received assurances they could. “Everybody … is scared to death that it’s going to happen again,” said Mary Jo Wood whose home was destroyed.

The 30-inch ruptured gas line that caused the explosion was shut off afterward, according to James McGuffey, Enbridge area manager. The company had multiple representatives at the site. A cause for the rupture was not immediately known, and it could take several days to determine, he added.

The pipeline was one of three in the area, according to McGuffey. Pressure was decreased drastically in the other two in case they were compromised in some way by the explosion. The ruptured pipeline, a Texas Eastern transmission line, stretches more than 9,000 miles from the Mexico border in Texas to New York City.

On Jan. 21, the same natural gas pipeline exploded in Noble County, Ohio, causing the destruction of two homes and injuries to two people, according to multiple media reports. The pipeline will be the focus of the National Transportation Safety Board which said it was sending three investigators to Kentucky.

Some residents living on or near the gas lines feared an accident while others didn’t, even after Thursday’s blast. Jason Griffitts who owns a farm adjoining the mobile home park said he worries more about a train derailment from tracks that run behind the house than he worries about the three gas lines that run under the land about 460 feet away from the house.

A blast like Thursday’s is “such a rarity,” he said. He got a visit from gas company representatives previously and they instructed him on the signs — hissing, dirt blowing up, dead vegetation — of a gas leak. It’s not clear if there were any advance signs that trouble was brewing in the mobile home park before Thursday.

“It was like a rocket turned upside down.” Witness describes scene of fire. Keith Demaree lives near where a natural-gas pipeline exploded early Aug. 1 in Lincoln County, Ky., that killed one woman. He said the frightening blast sent flames shooting 300 feet high. Gilliam, the emergency manager for the county, said he wakes up in the night concerned about the pipelines.

“When you get age on ‘em, you can’t help but be concerned,” he said. “I don’t know who would want to build next to a pipeline.” Despite the death and damage, the community got lucky Thursday because the results could have been much worse, Gilliam said.

“Our prayers are with all the families whom this disaster has touched, and our gratitude is with all the first responders who rushed toward towering flames to protect their neighbors and communities,” the Kentucky Republican said.

Laura Sioux Kirkpatrick wrote on Facebook her parents lost everything in the fire. She said her mother was burned but OK. “My step dad who is a Marine said he thought it was a nuclear attack it was so bright and the house walls was just melting right in front of their eyes,” Kirkpatrick wrote. “We don’t know how they got out alive but they did barely and at one point was trapped in the house and was for sure they where not going to get out.”

Explosion sent flames 200 feet high seen for 15 miles

From an Article by Scott DiSavino, Reuters News Service, January 23, 2019

(Reuters) – U.S. natural gas output in the Marcellus and Utica shale in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia dropped by 7 percent on Wednesday, following an explosion on Enbridge Inc’s Texas Eastern (TETCO) pipeline on Monday.

The blast, which injured two people who lived nearby and damaged three homes, occurred on TETCO’s 30-inch (76.2 cm) line about two miles south of Summerfield in Noble County in southeast Ohio at around 10:40 a.m. EST, the Calgary-based company said in a statement.

Before the incident, drillers were producing about 30 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of gas in the Marcellus and Utica region. That dropped to just 28 bcfd on Wednesday, according to Refinitiv, a financial data provider.

One billion cubic feet is enough gas for about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.

At the time of the blast, gas was flowing through TETCO from the Marcellus and Utica shale fields south toward the Gulf of Mexico, according to gas traders.

The amount of gas moving through TETCO south of the damaged pipe in Athens and Scioto Counties in southern Ohio dropped from around 1.2 bcfd on Monday to less than 0.1 bcfd on Wednesday, according to Refinitiv data.

In Bath, Monroe and Boyle Counties in Kentucky, flows also fell from over 1.0 bcfd on Monday to about 0.1 bcfd Wednesday.

In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, flows in Greene County in the southwest corner of the state reversed direction from 0.6 bcfd moving West on Monday to 0.4 bcfd heading east on Wednesday. Greene County is one of Pennsylvania’s biggest gas producing counties.

Officials at Enbridge could not say when the damaged section of pipe would return to service. The Calgary-based company said it was working with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to identify the cause, monitor repairs and evaluate environmental impacts.

Enbridge said the damaged section of pipe was built in 1952-53 (65 years) and an inspection of the line was performed in 2012 (6 years) with no remediation needed.

The 9,029-mile (14,531-km) TETCO pipeline was designed to carry gas from the U.S. Gulf Coast and Texas to high-demand markets in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. It became bi-directional over the past five years, enabling it to also carry gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale, where production is growing rapidly, to markets in the U.S. Midwest and Gulf Coast.

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NOTE: We believe that 65 years is an excessive lifetime for a buried metal pipeline operating at high thru-put and high pressure. Further, safety inspections should take place every year for old pipelines, not to five or six or more years. Water lines are relatively safe but natural gas and LPG pipelines are explosive with fires resulting. DGN