Over 70 homes damaged by natural gas pressure in Massachusetts

Investigators still don’t know what happened, but apparently excess gas pressure occurred

From an Article by Rachel Gutman, The Atlantic Magazine, September 14, 2018

Late Thursday, dozens of explosions erupted in three towns in northern Massachusetts. As many as 70 fires, explosions, and suspected gas leaks were reported to state police, with at least 39 homes affected in Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover. One person was killed when a chimney collapsed on his car, and at least 25 more people were reportedly treated for injuries.

In a statement, Columbia Gas said a total of 8,600 customers will be without service until safety teams can ensure that their homes and businesses are leak-free.

A widespread series of explosions like the one in Massachusetts is “really rare,” says Robert Jackson, a professor of energy and environmental science at Stanford University. Jackson’s studies focus on the environmental impacts of natural gas, and he has mapped thousands of gas leaks in cities around the country, including Boston. He told me that such an event is “unprecedented in recent years,” since explosions are usually isolated to a single building.

Jackson is not involved in investigating the Massachusetts explosions, but he was able to offer some insight into what could have caused such a strange, dramatic incident. The most likely explanation, he says, is the one most reports have speculated: Pipelines in the towns became suddenly over-pressurized. In the same way that high-voltage power lines traverse hundreds of miles before breaking off into lower-voltage tributaries in neighborhoods, natural-gas delivery systems consist of both long-distance, high-pressure pipelines and local ones that are only nominally pressurized and deliver gas into homes. Neighborhood pipelines are usually designed to withstand two to three times their normal operating pressure, but any increase makes gas more likely to escape.

“I can’t imagine another explanation for this event than a flush of pressurized gas,” Jackson says.

If local lines indeed were suddenly inundated with high-pressure gas, Jackson says, that could result in an explosion in one of two ways. First, the pipes themselves could explode. Second—and more likely, according to Jackson—excess pressure could have caused gas to leak out of pipes and valves and into homes, where it could be ignited by a pilot light and send whole buildings up in flames.

In most cases, according to Jackson, such rapid pressurization would be caused by a failure at a valve that separates high- and low-pressure pipelines. As for what would lead to such a failure, Jackson says, it could be that “somebody made a mistake. To flip the wrong valve, leave a junction open. Human error is the most common source of natural-gas explosions.”

Columbia Gas’s website announced an improvement campaign just a few hours before the explosions began, though no evidence has yet linked the explosions to pipeline updates or botched repairs.

A flush of gas could also occur if older valves leak or break. In 2015, Jackson and his colleagues found that cities like Cincinnati that replaced their aging pipelines had 90 percent fewer gas leaks a mile than older cities like Boston that relied on older, cast-iron pipes. Across the country, Jackson says, many local pipelines are more than a century old—including in Boston, the closest major city his team studied to Thursday’s explosions.

Even though natural-gas leaks are fairly common, serious consequences aren’t. From 1998 to 2017, 15 people a year, on average, died in incidents related to gas distribution in the U.S. “Significant incidents”—those that do things such as cause an injury or death, result in at least $50,000 of damage, or lead to a fire or explosion—happen about 286 times a year.

That might sound like a lot. But then again, the streets of Boston carry an average of four gas leaks a mile.

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Gas inspections continue days after explosions in Massachusetts

From an Article of CBS News, September 15, 2018

LAWRENCE, Mass. — Utility workers were continuing to go door-to-door at thousands of houses in the Merrimack Valley on Saturday, checking gas valves two days after a series of explosions and fires prompted widespread evacuations, CBS Boston reported.

On Friday, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover. That allowed the Department of Public Utilities to replace Columbia Gas with Eversource as the lead company in recovery efforts.

A series of gas explosions Thursday killed a teenager, injured about 25 others, damaged dozens of homes and forced the evacuation of thousands in Lawrence, North Andover and Andover.

Eversource said Friday it would be weeks, not days, to fully restore gas service in the region.

More than 100 gas technicians were deployed throughout the night and into Saturday to make sure each home is safe to enter. No one in the area should turn on their gas unless a crew turns it on for them.

Even after residents return and their electricity is restored, gas service won’t be turned on until technicians can inspect every connection in each home.

Elise Liegel of Greenbrier County

Elise Keaton Liegel of Greenbrier County is a Leading Voice

From an Article by the Editor, Corporate Crime Reporter, June 23, 2015

Fracking has been halted in New York and Maryland. That means it’s open season on West Virginia.

Two major pipelines have been proposed– the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline — that would cut through the West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina countryside — and move 2.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas from the frack fields of West Virginia to domestic and export markets.

But opposition is brewing. Elise Keaton Liegel is with the Greenbrier Watershed Association, one of the groups organizing against the pipelines.

“I am organizing communities ahead of the proposed Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines in West Virginia,” Keaton Liegel said in an interview with Corporate Crime Reporter last week. “These are two proposed 42 inch export lines that would carry up to 2.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from the frack fields in Wetzel and Doddridge counties to other markets outside of the state of West Virginia.”

“The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a project of Dominion — and Duke Energy is involved with that project as well. And for the Mountain Valley Pipeline — the primary actors are the EQT company and NextEra Energy.”

These pipelines will move natural gas from the northern part of West Virginia and hook up with other pipelines to take the gas to export markets. What is the legal status of the pipelines?

“They are in the pre-filing phase with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC),” Keaton Liegel said. “The companies have submitted a document to FERC that basically says — we are interested in building a pipeline, we are doing some research regarding what the best route for that pipeline would be. The process allows for environmental surveys. It allows for a preliminary run through of where the pipeline would go.”

“At the end of that pre-filing phase, the company either feels comfortable enough that the route is a good one that they then file a formal application with FERC, or they abandon the project and do not file a formal application with FERC. If these companies decide to file a formal application with FERC, that will happen in October 2015.”

“They have not filed a formal application with FERC and that’s very important. Many people think that FERC has already approved the pipelines and they are going to be built anyway. But the reality is that FERC must now take into consideration the thousands of comments that have been submitted in the past six months regarding specific issues with the proposed route.”

This natural gas that will be delivered by these pipelines is for export? “If the natural gas is for export, then federal government may not grant eminent domain for these companies to take the private property they would need to take to build the pipelines,” Keaton Liegel says.

“But the export argument is probably the easiest for FERC to dismiss. The pipeline companies argue that any person in the U.S. can pull gas off of this pipeline. You may need a $50 million facility to do it. But any person who can put together a $50 million facility and pull gas off of those pipelines can do it. Therefore there is a public benefit in the United States.”

“The export argument is not going to get us there. The export argument is easily dismissed by FERC. A stronger argument will be the impact on archaeological artifacts and endangered and threatened species and the damage to local water sources.”

Both Maryland and New York have effectively banned fracking. But in West Virginia, it’s full steam ahead.

“Every market that shuts down and says no fracking means that West Virginia is more of a target. It means we are the state that is going to let them frack it, so they all want to come here and get it,” Keaton Liegel said.

Politicians in West Virginia and Virginia almost universally support the pipelines. But opposition is bubbling up from the grassroots.

“There is a coalition that works with my group including the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC), the Highlands Conservancy, Christians for the Mountains, and Appalachian Mountain Advocates. There are a number of groups working in coalition with us,” Keaton Liegel says.

“We have regularly scheduled calls. What’s also happening is that along the pipeline route in each particular country, groups in opposition have popped up – Preserve the New River Valley, Preserve Monroe County, Preserve Craig, Preserve Greenbrier County. In Summers County, they call themselves Summers County Against the Pipeline (SCRAP). And now these groups are coordinating regionally, which is great news.”

“On the Atlantic Coast Pipeline – there is Friends of Nelson County and Friends of Augusta County,” Keaton Liegel says. “Those are both in the Charlottesville, Virginia area. They are loud and vocal against the pipeline. Apparently, both of those counties are completely saturated with no pipeline signs.”

“Both pipelines go through Lewis County, West Virginia. The folks there had been fighting the fracking industry. They have now begun to focus on this pipeline because the pipeline will necessitate more fracking. There is a lot of opposition up in the northern part of West Virginia – Lewis, Doddridge, Gilmer and Wetzel County. In Nicholas and Braxton counties, there is not a lot of opposition.”

“But when you get to Summers and Monroe counties, still in West Virginia, on the southern end before you get to Virginia, the opposition is profound. They turn out 140 people to every meeting they have.”

Are the companies currently going to property owners trying to get them to sign away their property? “Yes,” Keaton Liegel says. “They are buying up the land from willing sellers. Just asking property owners to come onto their land to do environmental surveys has failed by and large. Many people are resisting giving the companies access to their property. If the landowners refuse, that’s supposed to make us stop and ask – is this the right place for the pipeline?”

“Instead of following that process, listening to the landowners who are refusing, they are going in with contracts and saying – okay, we are going to pay you $150,000 for an easement – is that okay with you? That way, we don’t have to ask you permission to come onto that part of your land. It’s a strategic move by the companies to do that.”

Do we know how many landowners have been approached, how much land has been purchased or easements purchased? “That’s not public information,” she says. “What is public is the percentage of the route of the pipeline they have received approval for. Every couple of months, Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline are required to post a summary report. And the most recent one shows they had obtained rights to survey 80 percent of the pipeline route. That means 20 percent of the pipeline route is still resisting the surveys.”

“Virginia just enacted a law that says if the pipeline companies send you two certified letters and you tell them – no you can’t come on the property – they can sit outside your property until you go to work and they can go on your property. That just passed into law.”

Is there a similar bill pending in West Virginia? “In West Virginia, they amended a statute – the eminent domain statute – to allow gas pipeline companies to come on and survey your land without your permission. However, the whole premise of that statute is based on the grant of eminent domain. If the federal government hasn’t given them eminent domain, then they don’t even qualify for entry under the West Virginia statute.”

“The pipeline companies sued 103 landowners under the West Virginia eminent domain statute to gain entry to their land. And that case is in federal court now. And the main question in that case is – without a grant of eminent domain from FERC, does this company have the right under the state statute to survey the land? And this has never been decided. This will be a precedent setting case.”

“The investors saw that this lawsuit is going to hold them up in federal court for about eight or nine months. That will kill their timeline. Instead of following through with that lawsuit, they are now going to those 103 landowners and offering them money for the easements.”

“They are saying – you don’t want to be in court, we don’t to be in court – why don’t we just buy the easement? Here is some money so we can come onto your property.”

How much are they being offered? “I’ve seen contracts between $60,000 and $160,000 – depending on the acreage.”

Have you spoken with any landowners who just want to fight to the end? “That twenty percent number is pretty accurate – they are pretty adamant about it. Another third are less adamant. They are saying – what do I need to do to start preparing for the worst case scenario for myself?”

“Then there is another third who are really okay with taking that money and signing that easement. When you depress the economy the way they have in this state, it’s like 150 years ago when the coal companies did the same thing with coal. It’s easy to depress an economy and then wave money in front of them to encourage them to give up more of what they have. It’s a continuation of that same narrative.”

See also: www.MAREproject.org and  www.FriendsofNelson.com

High pressure pipes, how many, how long?

An insight with more truth than fiction is “legal thieves”

Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV, June 4, 2015

As you drive North on I-79 by the Jane Lew Exit, you go over a small hill and across an overpass. Then if you will look right you will see a red barn with the sign “Consolidated Gas Legal Thieves” It was put there originally by my neighbor, Jack Shock. How it got there is an interesting story.

When Consolidated Gas (now Dominion Resources) decided to build a storage field in the Fink area of Lewis County, the geologists thought they had it confined to the Fink area. Storage fields are usually exhausted gas fields, but since they may be pressurized beyond the original source gas, geologists have to be careful to see that the gas bearing material runs into something else that is not porous. In this case they misjudged and it leaked out somewhere on Kincheloe, moving north. The Fink storage field needed to be abandoned, unless the storage could be extended to some new area where it could be confined.

So they went back to the maps and well logs and decided on an area to be called the Lost Creek Storage Field. It is around the town of Lost Creek, in a considerably more populated and less rural area. When people heard about the additional wells and pipelines they became outraged, since the area had been exploited for one hundred years, going back to John D. Rockefeller’s Hope Natural Gas company.

Jack was the mainspring of an organization called Concerned Land and Natural Resources Owners, Inc., which came into being in the 1970′s. To conclude the story about the Lost Creek Storage Field, it leaked, too, and that brought in to existence what was once called the Bridgeport Storage Field. Today the combined fields has become one of the largest in the United States. [I read years later that the Gantz Sand, in which the storage field is located, was a series of sandbanks along a great river which ran from the area of the Catskills to the inland sea that was located in what is now the center of the continent.]

Jack Shock was a large, corpulent man, who had been a good basketball player in high school around 1950 and who had enjoyed many a good fist fight in his younger years in Akron, OH. While working as a machinist there he had accumulated enough money from that job to add to his Uncle Elias’ property and have a considerable acreage.

He thought a lot, and wrote many pieces in local newspapers. He was not a powerful speaker or debater, but understood power moves very well. The term “Legal Thieves” implies using law to steal. It is recognition that ethics and what is legal are not the same. This is heresy to many people, since we have a high opinion of our native land and are taught all our lives to obey the law. At this point I need to say a few things about the nature of law to focus what follows.

There has to be a set of rules to conduct any kind of business. The owner must have property secured. Loaning money must be conducted so people will repay. Regardless of the form of government, only the most simple forms of cooperation can be conducted without laws. So people will put up with less-than-perfect laws to have some law.

Now I think it should be obvious that law doesn’t necessarily involve some form of “fairness.” Laws can be written to do all kinds of things. They can be written to support slavery. They can be written to support religious beliefs, or a particular religion. They can be written to enclose a nation or city, or they can be written to encourage trade. All can be enforced with state violence. This they do not teach you in school, do they?

More to the point, laws can be written to determine how the economic pie is divided. What is a fair share for labor, for management and ownership? Some of the big questions for all of us who have observed changes in the law involve precisely those relationships. Organization of labor has largely been eliminated, to the advantage of management and ownership. Social services are under attack. Fair wage, once established by government, has been allowed to stagnate compared to increased productivity.

On the other hand, safety laws for the worker and community have been put in place, to the disadvantage of management and ownership. Establishment of truth in lending, laws regulating food quality, various kinds of medical licensing, consumer law, and so forth, have helped everyone, but especially labor, because laborers have limited resources with which to look out for themselves.

Some categories are ambiguous. Does the seatbelt law help ordinary citizens most, or insurance companies? Does medical marijuana help citizens or a particular business? Gun laws are notoriously controversial. So, one may ask, Who does each kind of law help? Eminent domain was helpful to society until it became a tool for private industry.

What I’m coming to is the increasing awareness among people that laws are not sacred “received truth,” a simplistic view once widely held. Any particular law is likely to define a balance between the interests of some group and some other(s). For a group to be using influence and money to advance its own interests is not unusual. It may, in fact, be the most common mode of law change.

This in turn, implies an unfair balance of interests, a balance not obvious to everyone involved. How is fair recognized? What is to prevent a strong interest group from pursuing its particular interest far from the balance, from supplying campaign funds, publicity, and assistance of other sorts to sympathetic legislators and bureaucrats?

Just how is fair defined? In the default form of government, the king and his subjects work it out, and it results in the greatest flow of desirables to them. What goes on in a Republic is much more difficult. The well informed, enfranchised voters work it out for their mutual greatest satisfaction.

OK! There is a lot of “rub” in that one – “well-informed, enfranchised voters.” How do you get voters to do the considerable work required to inform themselves? Good question, especially in our hugely complex modern society.

See also:  www.WVsoro.org

Texas City Pipeline Fire 1/14/15

America’s Disastrous History of Pipeline Accidents Shows Why the Keystone XL Vote Matters

From an Article by Noah Greenwald, Center for Biological Diversity, Huffington Post, January 18, 2015

It’d be easy to discount the Senate vote over the Keystone XL pipeline as mere political theater but that’d be a mistake. Build Keystone XL and you build on a long and disastrous history of pipelines in America.

A new analysis of federal records reveals that in just the past year and four months, there have been 372 oil and gas pipeline leaks, spills and other incidents, leading to 20 deaths, 117 injuries and more than $256 million in damages.

The new data adds to a June 1, 2013 independent analysis of federal records revealing that since 1986, oil and gas pipeline incidents have resulted in 532 deaths, more than 2,400 injuries and more than $7.5 billion in damages.

Check out this new time-lapse video that includes every “significant pipeline” incident in the continental United States — along with their human and financial costs — from 1986 to October 1, 2014. On average one significant pipeline incident occurs in the country every 30 hours, according to the data.

So what would happen if Keystone XL is built? The U.S. State Department estimates Keystone XL could spill up to 100 times during its lifetime.

One difference between Keystone XL and the vast majority of other pipelines that have spilled is that it will be carrying tar sands oil, which has proven very difficult, if not impossible, to clean up. A 2010 spill of tar sands oil in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, for example, has yet to be cleaned up despite four years of effort. Another tar sands spill in 2013 fouled an entire neighborhood in Arkansas. Federal regulators have acknowledged that Keystone XL, too, will spill.

TransCanada’s existing Keystone I tar sands pipeline has reportedly leaked at least 14 times since it went into operation in June 2010, including one spill of 24,000 gallons. The State Department’s environmental reviews have pointed out that spills from Keystone XL are likely. The pipeline will cross a number of important rivers, including the Yellowstone and Platte, as well as thousands of smaller rivers and streams.

Yes, politicians are looking to score political points in their vote on Keystone XL. But in the rest of the world, this is no game and if Keystone XL moves forward, the losers will be streams, rivers, wildlife, water, our climate, and, ultimately, all of us who depend on them.  << See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net >>

Brooke County WV Ethane Pipeline Explosion

Fracked wells operate at very high pressure

New concerns arise over fracking’s safety for society

From an Article by Bruce Kennedy, CBS / Moneywatch, July 2, 2014

The ongoing controversy over the method for removing oil and gas from unconventional, hard-to-reach underground deposits that’s known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has some new data to chew on.

It seems a large percentage of oil and gas wells tapping the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania are leaking methane gas, either into the air or into underground sources of drinking water. That’s the finding of an analysis conducted by a Cornell University-led research team and published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team looked at compliance reports for more than 41,000 conventional and unconventional oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania. It determined that unconventional gas wells in northeastern Pennsylvania had a nearly three-fold higher risk of leaking, compared to conventional wells in the same region. One possible factor for this so-called “methane migration,” according to the study, could be “compromised structural integrity” in the casings and cement used in the unconventional oil and gas wells.

“These results, particularly in light of numerous contamination complaints and explosions nationally in areas with high concentrations of unconventional oil and gas development and the increased awareness of the role of methane in anthropogenic [man-made] climate change, should be cause for concern,” it concluded. “In a typical well, hundreds of bags of cement are mixed and injected,” Anthony Ingraffea, one of the study’s lead authors and a Cornell professor of civil and environmental engineering, told the University’s Cornell Chronicle news site. ”If the water-to-cement mixture ratio isn’t right, you have problems,” he said. “With too much water, the cement shrinks. With too little water, the mixture dries too fast.”

The energy industry has fired back against the new report. ”This paper is a work of deception that massively exaggerates the risks of domestic oil and natural gas production,” Katie Brown, spokesperson for Energy in Depth — a program of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) — said in a statement. “The lead author claims to be an objective researcher,” she continued, “but he’s really an outspoken opponent of drilling who works with fringe environmental groups and celebrity anti-energy activists like performance artist Yoko Ono and Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo.”

Fracking has helped bring about an historic oil and gas production boom in the U.S., creating energy supplies that are moving the U.S. closer to energy independence. On Tuesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that American crude oil production for April was 8.4 million barrels per day. Texas and North Dakota, two states where fracking is in wide use, accounted for nearly half the total.

However, opponents have been pointing to fracking’s potential health dangers, such as possible wide-scale pollution of essential drinking water supplies, as reasons to limit or even completely ban the process.

But Mark Zoback, a Stanford University geophysicist, member of the National Academy of Engineering’s Deepwater Horizon investigation committee and a fracking expert, says this technology has a place, as long as the states and federal government set up rigorous standards to oversee its use and protect both the public and the environment. “The oil and gas industry is a large-scale industrial process, [like] food preparation, aviation, transportation, chemical plants,” Zoback recently told the Los Angeles Times. “We live in a highly technological and complex society,” he said, “and the only way we can survive is through the marriage between technology and regulation.

Also: “Scientists in Ohio link fracking to earthquakes”

Also: “Wisconsin debates fracking as sand mining for drilling booms”

—– Original Message —–

From: Robert Donnan

Sent:  July 24, 2012

Subject: Whoops.. Trouble in Truthland!

Whoops!  Let’s see how Energy in Depth spins this one.  Shelly Depue, star of the new movie TRUTHLAND, just made her rounds here and got VERY quiet when an audience member in Uniontown questioned her on what she knew about all the violations from the 10 Marcellus wells on her property. It must be rough being a parrot for industry when you have a bubbling annulus!

Trouble in Truthland

July 22, 2012 – Research has revealed that there is trouble in truth land. One of the Depue wells (8H) is severely flawed with a bubbling annulus. An annulus is the cemented layer between layers of steel, you know, the one that ‘never leaks’ and can survive cannon-type explosions as seen toward the end of the “Truthland” movie. Two more of the Depue wells (2H and 6H) have PA-DEP violations, which are shown below. Needless to say, it’s not going nearly as well as all the “experts” interviewed in the Truthland movie led Shelly to believe it would!

At one of the Pennsylvania movie screenings this past week, Ms. Depue stated she had not seen the PA-DEP File Review documents for Depue 8H. At least now she can find them here, since they are shown below, for everyone’s reference. Isn’t it odd that Pennsylvania landowners can be ‘kept in the dark’ when important things like this are happening on their property, that could affect their health and well-being. Violations like “Failure to properly control or dispose of industrial or residual waste to prevent pollution of the waters of the Commonwealth” doesn’t sound good for anyone living in Pennsylvania.

http://www.marcellus-shale.us/Depue-Truthland.htm

Background on Robert Donnan of Peters Township, Washington County, PA

As a married father, Bob has been active in the Peters Township community since 1980. This active participation has involved redesigning plantings on township traffic islands, the donation of trees for community parks, and several winters teaching landscaping classes for the township’s adult education program.

As a Son of the American Revolution and a war veteran himself, Bob realizes the importance of recognizing the sacrifices of fellow veterans and their families. By supporting numerous public and private efforts, he has worked long hours to ensure these men and women are not forgotten. Bob has posted additional web pages to honor local police and the heroes of Flight 93.

On the environmental front, Bob has been actively engaged in air and water quality issues. He was instrumental in getting leaf burning banned in his township, and is now working on water quality and air quality issues in SW Pennsylvania related to Marcellus Shale gas drilling.

See “bob’s blog” at the following address:

http://www.donnan.com/Marcellus-Gas_Hickory.htm