Huge natural gas pipeline explodes in Texas

22 Replies to “Huge natural gas pipeline explodes in Texas”

Prayers for the dead, the missing, and their families.

All the more reason to hurry up and cover the landscape with the billions of windmills we’ll need to power civilization.

There’s a reason why natural gas is less popular as a transportation fuel than gasoline or diesel.
This is the reason.
So when you hear all those guys out there extolling the virtues of natural gas, just remember it goes BANG really, really hard when you break a pipeline or a storage tank.

Serious error on someone’s part, these big steel lines are not invisible, so, someone erred.
That aside, my sympathies to victims and families.
Long and short though, unless we are willing to ALL move to tropics on the equator, and its subsequent risks, we need fossil fuels to survive AND for our commerce.

A very significant pipeline goes under my parents property in BC. I always joke with my dad that if he did hit it, you wouldn’t feel it. Of course its quite deep below grade on their property as it goes under the road and then under the creek that boarders their property.
This isn’t anymore news then some meat head hitting a power-line with his excavator. If the line had spontaneously exploded, or a compressor station exploded I’d consider it news.
Hell we’ve had two communities evacuated in the last week here in Calgary for the exact same thing, minus the explosion.

CALL BEFORE YA DIG.
GO CLEAN, GO MODERN, GO BOOM!
I have a relatively small yellow plastic 2″ gas line on my frontage.
I had to repair a rusted out culvert and called Ma Bell to locate and they said they locate for all buried utilities.
Seems the gas line was 2′ from the culvert so I dug it by hand.( regs don’t allowed mechanical digging within a meter.) I consulted the county about a chunk of used culvert and they quite readily and happily delivered a NEW piece……they REALLY don’t like digging by hand.

Yeah Duffman, you just keep believin’ that pipeline was put 8′ below the ground like it’s supposed to be.
Key word here – hydrovac is your friend 😉

did you notice how the MSM readily segues from this to the Gulf leak? Yes, even Fox News did, but then again it was Shepard Smith…

Dial before you dig is absolutely right. When we are working on a road and after they mark the line it appears that the dig could be somewhat in the danger zone, the gas guy sticks around to monitor the dig. We have discovered that the lines are not always as deep as everybody thinks, especially when the line goes through ditches.

According to Fox: Fire is out and there are no confirmed deaths and only one still missing. That missing person is person operating the machine that ruptured the line in the first place.

Duffman jump into and excavator an try to work around power lines,workers,trees,trucks, buried cables, live water mains,gas mains etc etc and not be a “meat head” once (Here in Ontario an operator and their company will get investigated after breaking a gas line no matter what size and and could loose their job as well as get fined). Locates can be wrong,transmission line markers on rural lot lines can be missing lots of factors can lead to s–t hitting the fan, not just a guy thinking he’s in control of a tonka in a sandbox.
Usually when your dealing with anything high pressure and big enough you have a third party there from the gas company specifying how and where it’s safe to dig, and you don’t dig within so many meters of their easement without them being there the whole time your excavating or even present in their easement.
I can’t imagine a guy auguring for a hydro pole over a large main, unless he had no idea it was there, that includes the roadside markers that usually warn of a gas main being present, especially the big stuff.

Surprised that Obumble isn’t calling for banning natural gas, in order to protect people from themselves…….
A word about NG, it is not as dangerous as everyone wants to believe. That is not to take away from the potential danger, but, NG can only be ignited when its air/gas ratio is 93/7, and it is a very narrow range. As a former associate used to say, who was a trained fireman, it was more concerning digging around ug hydro, than ug gas…..you didn’t get second chances if you hit hydro.
Keep in mind, the real danger with NG, is working around the high pressure gas feeder lines, not local distribution. That is the real danger, where explosive accidents can happen……without flames.

With respect to DanBC, I think he is mistaken. The
ratio of exposive mixtures between methane and air
is very wide, with methane being the principal consituent of natural gas.

LEL (lower explosive limit) NG is 5%.
UEL (upper explosive limit) NG is 15%.

Texas, eh? Bush did it.

One of the bigger problems with large, cross country NG lines is they operate under so much pressure that they regularly auto-ignite when they rupture. New integrity management techniques like inline inspection tools and corrosion surveys (“CP” and such) should reduce these types of accidents, but when human induced, they don’t help much.
Do Canadian provinces have 811 One-Call systems like the US?

Mugs
“”””I can’t imagine a guy auguring for a hydro pole over a large main””””
I can, I’v spent a lot of time south of the border
in some areas they lose track of who’s got the brain today:-))))
“”””Do Canadian provinces have 811 One-Call systems like the US? “”””
we gots that, here in Ontario

If an 811 call system means call before you dig, Saskatchewan has ’em, too.

We gots 311 here in AB,same thing,different #.And if you don’t call them first,they will make sure the following fine WILL put your “company” out of business,tout suite.

Saskatchewan has a decent one-call system, finally. Until last year, a couple of major utilities refused to participate. Sask Power thought it would be a threat to their workers’ jobs, because contractors would use private sub-contractors to locate lines. Imagine, holding out to protect some union workers, at the expense of everyone else’s safety. Oh well, they’ve been pressured into doing the right thing.
The fact there’s a one-call system is no guarantee people won’t hit lines. It only works if everyone uses it, and does a proper follow up.
The US system puts more responsibility on the facility owner, to mark his lines. If you’ve requested a locate, and the owner doesn’t respond to the request, the owner is liable for damages, should you hit it. In Canada, the person doing the construction is responsible, even if the facility owner didn’t register a proper caveat, or respond to a call to mark his facility. I believe the US model is a bit more friendly to new projects. We have to jump through too many hoops up here.