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US Pipeline Caused Biggest Spill in Decades, We’re Just Hearing About It
- spenrose 6y ago"The Colonial pipeline is owned by a company of the same name, which is, in turn, controlled by companies including Koch Industries (its largest shareholder, which made $85 million in dividends from the pipeline in 2016) and Royal Dutch Shell. The pipeline was initially built in 1963, and stretches from Texas to New Jersey. According to the company, the pipeline transports around 2.5 million barrels of fuel per day, mostly underground, that supplies 45% of the entire East Coast’s gasoline. In 2016, North Carolina alone got 70% of its gasoline from the pipeline. Its owners have said that technology can detect leaks as small as 3% of the pipeline’s daily flow–which works out to around 1.8 million gallons."
- cromka 6y ago"as small as 3%"
- whelming_wave 6y agoimagining them spilling a million gallons a day undetected is so depressing
- kodah 6y agoYou should see how much water your local water utility loses on the way to deliver water to your house. They're fascinating numbers.
- mcguire 6y agoLosing water is one thing. Oil or gasoline, or other toxic liquids, are another.
- cibyr 6y agoGasoline also costs a lot more than water.
- tinus_hn 6y agoSpilled gasoline probably is tax free
- dillondoyle 6y agoprobably tex deductible!
- guerrilla 6y agoI think they were commenting on the pollution, not the inefficiency.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoThen what are they?
- cromka 6y agoI read that about NY, which used wooden water pipes made of hollowed-out tree trunks for its aqueduct: https://aqueduct.org/article/historic-wooden-water-pipes-unearthed https://aqueduct.org/article/historic-wooden-water-pipes-une...
- Gibbon1 6y agoAbout ten years ago a contractor lowering the floor of a garage in San Francisco found a 6 foot diameter pipe made of redwood and iron bands. It was still in use.
- cromka 6y agoYes, NYC has an identical problem: most of those pipes were not documented or the documentation is lost. They're there, they know they are, they just don't know where.
- Gibbon1 6y agoFriend said the contractor called the city, who then accused him of working without a permit. And then after that was squared told him the pipe was abandoned. The contractor said okay I'm going to cut into it with a chainsaw. At which point they sent out an inspector and all hell broke loose. City's maps showed the pipe running in the middle of the street. But it was under a row of 12 houses.
- cromka 6y agoI find that hilarious. It's like they immediately assume fault, because they get used to having everything so perfectly documented, except the old technical documentation can be very imprecise. Heard stories like these, too.
- kodah 6y agoYeah, you'll find lots of surprising stuff if you care to look. For instance, when I took NASSCO certification I was exposed to the sewers that are made of brick in San Antonio. Pipes made of redwood are new to me but not that surprising. Secondarily, don't be too suspect of the city not knowing where in-ground infrastructure is. This business is tricky. You have to take calibrated GPS land markers out (that are hopefully properly calibrated) and document things like depth. Often it's contractors doing it rather than the actual city workers, and they're usually paid on a per inspection basis (but this can vary). Much of this was drawn on really huge maps that went into equally huge books back in the day, now of course ESRI is used for everything but much of that was lift and shift in most cities that I'm aware of, so data should be trusted but verified.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mcguire 6y ago"Margolis pointed out that the Colonial pipeline is so old that its anti-corrosion mechanism is simply a coating of coal tar. “That’s scary,” he said, pointing out that newer pipelines with updated technology still have accidents."
- sokoloff 6y ago> Margolis said that gasoline’s physical composition—it sinks to the bottom of bodies of water, unlike oil, which stays slick on top This doesn’t match my experience where water contamination in pure gasoline very quickly settles to the bottom of a test jar and where gasoline spilled while boat fueling clearly floats on water. Gasoline is around 6 lbs/gallon and water a bit over 8 lbs/gallon. I don’t see how gasoline could sink given those wide disparities in density.
- Pfhreak 6y agoMaybe the gasoline contains ethanol and it formed some compounds when exposed to the environmental moisture?
- sokoloff 6y agoEthanol doctoring of the fuel (whether E10 or E85) typically happens at the wholesale terminal, after the pipeline transportation.
- jackfoxy 6y agoWithout more clarification this appears to be nonsense. Do any search for gasoline floats on water and every explanation says gasoline floats on water, not the other way around. If there is any hope in this disaster it is that interstate pipelines transport raw gasoline (more or less a natural fraction of petroleum) without the additives. It is the additives like MTBE (now I believe outlawed) that create the most lasting ground pollution. Light petroleum fractions naturally migrate towards the surface, where they are either consumed by microbes that eat the light fractions (and leave the heaviest fractions) or they evaporate.
- markbnj 6y agoAgreed. The statement also caught my eye and the only thing I could find that seems even remotely relevant is http://www.earthdrx.org/specificgravitylesser.html http://www.earthdrx.org/specificgravitylesser.html. This is very specific to lighter fluids injected into a subsurface ground layer below a water layer, and theorizes as to why the lighter fluid may not percolate through the heavier fluid above.
- tbihl 6y agoThe maddening thing about these pipelines is that fixed infrastructure should have such high payoff for moving petroleum compared to roads or, when possible, trains. As long as politicians show such an unwavering commitment to neglecting old infrastructure in favor of building more, however, we would be crazy to support any more of it being built. But outside the NRC, I don't know of any US agency with sufficiently thorough cradle-to-grave scrutiny (which even they are denied by politicians, considering the disposal debacle that is Yucca Mountain).
- bpodgursky 6y agoA lot of the time, the right solution IS to build new infrastructure to replace the old. You can only patch a bridge so long. New nuclear reactors are simply safer than old ones, no matter how much money you pump into maintenance. You're setting up a catch-22 here where increasingly decrepit infrastructure continues to fail despite being a money pit, but nobody has the agency to simply start over with a better design.
- tbihl 6y agoMaybe I've misunderstood the issue, but I thought the new pipelines were for expanding capacity and service areas. It's also possible I wasn't very clear. When I rail against the new, it's not against replacement (e.g. complete overhaul of a road instead of patching potholes.) I get upset when my low density metro creates seemingly endless new highway lane miles at the same time that potholes in core areas reach ages and heights consistent with average toddlers.
- sitkack 6y agoI think you overlooked the cradle-to-grave, whole system optimization aspect of the focus on the NRC. We don't apply the same systems thinking to the rest of our civilization. I think the parent is advocating for more systematic long term thinking.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoThere are about 4,000,000 miles of road in the US, and about 2,500,000 miles of pipeline. Pipelines will be used for the next century as we transition over to clean energy. If pipelines are blocked, the fossil fuel gets transported on the road or by train and has a higher climate change impact, because friction forces that are seen inside of pipes are lower than the rolling friction of wheels. This is the transport energy barrier that has to be overcome by pumps.
- thatcat 6y agoPipelines leak because they are pressurized pipes that are filled with oil. The amount they leak annually is comparable to large tanker spills, but since it occurs constantly at a low level in a way that is less visible this type of leak is under reported. This also has a carbon and environmental cost that must be weighed against alternatives.
- jiveturkey 6y agoTFA says 190k miles of petroleum pipelines, 2.4m total with natural gas included
- js2 6y ago> The 2016 back-to-back spill and explosion, for example caused gas shortages in six states. Resident of Raleigh, NC. That leak is part of why we own a Chevy Volt. I remember thinking: "I don't want to be beholden to gasoline." But I also remember thinking: "I don't want to be beholden to the electric grid." > Enbridge has estimated that properly deactivating its aging Line 3 pipeline and taking it out of the ground would cost more than $1.2 billion dollars. The company is currently considering simply abandoning it and paying off the landowners involved, which it says would cost a relatively paltry $85 million, but leave corrosive pipes littered underneath the landscape. Privatize the profits, socialize the costs. These companies should have been taxed for these costs, with the money going into a fund earmarked for cleanup.
- BostonEnginerd 6y agoWe had the same thought when we bought our Volt. Electricity is fine for 99% of our driving, but it’s nice to have the fossil backup in case it’s needed.
- BostonEnginerd 6y agoAlso, I think the cleanup should be required when someone wants to build this sort of project. Absurd that they don’t have to clean up the whole mess.
- hedora 6y agoEnbridge is simultaneously attempting to get permits to build more pipelines on Native American land. In this particular case, there’s an obvious solution: Clean up all your messes, or no new permits for you.
- monadic8 6y ago....only if you can tie this to enough politicians that they fear for reelection and fight for it. These events are barely covered by major newspapers; there's zero chance of the reasonable solution happening.
- clouddrover 6y ago
- rurban 6y agoWhat they didn't address was if Charlotte needs to get evacuated (ha!), how they get their water, how they plan to limit the damage. This is oil in the groundwater. Expect cancer cases rising in Charlotte by the thousands
- wombatmobile 6y agoCan pipeline owners be fined for leaks? Are pipeline owners obligated by law to rehabilitate spills?
- brutusborn 6y agoDepends on jurisdiction. Even if a locale does have rules on the books, enforcement is a major issue.
- marshmallow_12 6y agodoes no one in that place use the internet?
- 34245634634 6y agoThe entire article reads like a classic PG "submarine article" from anti-pipeline activists, who use lawsuits, protests, and sabotage[1] to thwart the construction of new pipelines (even to replace old ones, like in the article) and upgrades or even necessary repairs to existing pipelines. It also hypocritically criticizes companies for considering abandoning aging pipelines, which these same activists fight to prevent them from upgrading or replacing. Clearly the goal is to make fossil fuels so expensive, to speed up adoption of renewables. But do these people not realize that these chemicals have other uses (e.g., plastics, rubbing alcohol), and that they need to be transported regardless, and pipelines are much safer (and cheaper) than rail or road transport? [1]https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2017/07/24/dakota-access-protesters-claim-responsibility-pipeline-sabotage/504136001/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2017/07/24/dako...
- pllbnk 6y ago> Enbridge has estimated that properly deactivating its aging Line 3 pipeline and taking it out of the ground would cost more than $1.2 billion dollars. The company is currently considering simply abandoning it and paying off the landowners involved, which it says would cost a relatively paltry $85 million, but leave corrosive pipes littered underneath the landscape. How is it possible that even in this day and age such huge infrastructure projects do not account for decommissioning costs and build everything as if it will last forever. It seems that the calculations are made by only incorporating the building and maintenance costs, then subtracting them from revenue and putting everything that remains in the profit line. Then they act surprised when they see a huge amount of money that is required for decommissioning and are not willing to pay even though they have been profitting all along. Since the projects are meant to last a long time, it's reasonable to include the rate of inflation into the calculations and then not be surprised that the costs are so large. On a related note, software projects are done the same way. Very often thinking a few steps ahead is frowned upon and written off as "overengineering" although the costs of replacing an obsolete software product with a modern one are also very costly to the company and society.
- brutusborn 6y agoIn my experience with new projects of this kind, these costs are included in economic studies since legislation has changed to make companies pay for decommissioning. This does not solve the problem however, because larger companies can just sell aging assets to smaller companies who then bleed them dry and when the time comes to decommission, declaring bankruptcy. In my opinion the only way to prevent this is to introduce legislation which makes executives liable for cleanup costs in some way. E.g. (1) Force companies to buy "cleanup insurance" , or (2) make it illegal to trade "insolvently" where company assets < Cost(cleanup). Either the executives pay for cleanup or are imprisoned. This is probably a naive policy prescription, I'm sure someone in the field could easily come up with something better.