Welded joints on Mariner East pipelines are supposed to be safe

From an Article by Anya Litvak, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, March 19, 2020

A pipeline worker from Westmoreland County is expected to plead guilty to a felony for forging documents that said a weld on the Mariner East pipeline was properly X-rayed when, in reality, it was not.

Joshua Springer, of Scottdale, worked on Texas-based Energy Transfer’s Mariner East 2 pipeline project between May 2017 and June 2018, according to court documents.

For the most part, he was assigned to work on a 20-mile segment between Houston and Delmont. His job involved taking X-rays of welds, interpreting that data to ensure the weld was good and recording his findings in records that would go to Energy Transfer. It is not clear from the court records which company Mr. Springer worked for.

Documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania indicate Mr. Springer is scheduled to plead guilty to the charge during an April 1 hearing. He faces up to five years in prison and a fine up to $250,000.

But that’s unlikely to be the end of the story. A notification about Mr. Springer’s felony charge posted on the state Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General’s website indicates the investigation is ongoing and is being conducted with the FBI.

Energy Transfer spokeswoman Lisa Coleman said that the company’s outside auditors discovered the falsified records at some point in 2018, before the pipeline was put into service. The company X-rays all of its welds, which it credited with being able to detect the forged report.

“Immediately upon learning of the situation, we reported it to the appropriate regulatory agencies and the individual was terminated by his employer,” Ms. Coleman said. “We subsequently reinspected all welds in the section of pipeline where this individual worked and confirmed that the welds were in compliance with our welding specifications and Title 195 Code requirements.”

She said Energy Transfer cooperated with regulatory agencies, which “determined that we were not in violation of any regulations.”

The Mariner East pipelines — there are three that run mostly parallel to each other — carry natural gas liquids between the Marcellus and Utica Shales in Ohio, West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania to processing facilities near Philadelphia.

The $3 billion construction project has been plagued by a number of problems, including sinkholes, landslides, water contamination and other environmental permit violations.

On the pipeline safety and integrity front, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation, has sent Energy Transfer numerous warning letters over the course of Mariner East pipeline construction, alleging noncompliance with federal regulations and its own company policies.

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Energy Transfer wants security, but the residents want safe neighborhoods

Revolution pipeline blast site in Center Twp. Beaver County, PA

From an Article by Reid Frazier, State Impact PA, January 6, 2020

STATEIMPACT PENNSYLVANIA – The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection announced an agreement Friday that includes a record fine against the company responsible for a 2018 natural gas pipeline explosion in Beaver County.

The settlement also lifts a nearly year-long permit freeze on the company’s other pipeline projects, including the cross-state Mariner East pipelines.

As part of the settlement, the PA-DEP assessed a $30.6 million fine against ETC Northeast Pipeline, a subsidiary of the pipeline company Energy Transfer, the largest ever issued by the regulator. PA-DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell said in a statement the fine’s size was in part due to the company’s failure to comply with an order the agency issued one month after the blast.

“ETC’s lack of oversight during construction of the Revolution Pipeline and their failure to comply with PA-DEP’s October 2018 compliance order demanded serious accountability. Their inaction led directly to this unprecedented civil penalty,” McDonnell said.

At the heart of the settlement was the Sept. 10, 2018 explosion along the Revolution pipeline. A landslide near Ivy Lane in Center Township caused the pipeline to rupture. The subsequent blast shot flames 150 feet into the air, forced evacuations and burned one house to the ground. The fire damaged power lines and destroyed two garages, a barn and several vehicles.

The Revolution had only been in service a week, carrying gas along a 40-mile route between Butler and Washington counties, when the blast occurred. In the Consent Agreement, the PA-DEP determined that “neither temporary nor permanent stabilization … had been achieved” along the pipeline when the landslide and rupture occurred.

As part of its consent agreement, the PA-DEP outlined a laundry list of violations and oversights. Those violations extended well beyond the blast site and included failure to stabilize more than a dozen hillsides, poor stormwater management and more than 2,000 other deficiencies, resulting in impacts to “numerous” streams and wetlands.

The PA-DEP says it found that between February 2018 and December 2019, 19 different hillside sections of the pipeline weren’t stabilized, “resulting in numerous slides”; 352 separate occurrences of accelerated erosion and sedimentation; and 540 different occasions when sediment-laden water was discharged into several western Pennsylvania creeks and wetlands. In addition, the agency found over 2,000 instances where the company failed to properly implement “best management practices,” construction standards required by state permits.

The state found that the company “eliminated at least twenty-three (23) streams by removing and/or filling the stream channels with soil,” resulting in a loss of 1,857 feet of stream channel. It also “(e)liminated at least seventeen (17) and altered at least seventy (70) wetland areas by manipulating and/or filling wetlands with soil.”

The PA-DEP also found the company had plenty of warning signs the hillside was slip-prone but failed to properly manage the site. It says a January 2016 Energy Transfer analysis “concluded that the area of the Incident Site had a high susceptibility to slope failure.” Three months before the blast, a “slip” occurred on the hillside about 30 feet from where the pipe would rupture.

While the company tried to restore the hillside, the PA-DEP said, “neither an engineer nor any other geotechnical expert was consulted by field staff.” The settlement binds the company to restore the site of the blast and other wetlands it damaged, and to monitor the blast site for a minimum of five years.

The PA-DEP says that despite these deficiencies, the company hired a new management team for the pipeline and “has demonstrated its intention to correct its unlawful conduct to PA-DEP’s satisfaction.” Therefore, it’s lifting a hold on permits for Energy Transfer’s other projects in the state. These include the Mariner East pipeline, which carries natural gas products from west of Pittsburgh to an export facility near Philadelphia.

McDonnell said PA-DEP will continue to monitor the company’s activities. “The conditions imposed by this agreement seek to ensure that (Energy Transfer) will get this right. Anything less is unacceptable.”

Environmental groups renewed their criticisms of Energy Transfer, which has already racked up more than $12 million in fines for its violations along the Mariner East.

PennFuture CEO Jacqueline Bonomo said in a statement that the organization “applauds the DEP for holding this bad actor accountable for its environmental degradation and repeated violations.”

The Better Path Coalition, a coalition of environmental groups, said in a statement that many Pennsylvanians “will shudder at the thought that the company will be able once again to get permits for its projects.”

Kurt Knaus, a spokesman for Pennsylvania Energy Infrastructure Alliance, a statewide pipeline industry group, praised the settlement, saying it shows PA-DEP is ensuring pipelines in the state will meet “the highest environmental standards.”

“Skilled laborers who have been waiting to get back to work will finally be back on the job, putting their training to use for the safe, responsible development of critical infrastructure,” Knaus said, in a statement.