New Year’s gas release not an insignificant event, company manager says

Searsmont citizens demand better oversight at Spectra pipeline compressor station

Thu, 01/23/2014 - 1:30am

    SEARSMONT — In the wake of a significant natural gas release New Year’s Eve, the 75 residents who gathered Jan. 21 in a Searsmont community room are asking Spectra Energy to hire a local attendant to oversee the compressor station, establish better communication with citizens, deliver more information about the chemical dispersals, and clarify emergency procedures should another incident occur.

    Doing rough math, residents estimated that Spectra could hire an engineer to live in close proximity to the station for less than the $300,000 the company hypothetically lost during the Dec. 31 emergency venting of 71,098 cubic feet of natural gas into the atmosphere.

    “What the community can do is relay to the corporation how important it is for us to have someone at the station at night,” said Theresa Trask, of Searsmont.

    The pipeline is part of the Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline, whose majority holder is Spectra Energy, which owns 77 percent of the venture. Exxon Mobil and Emera Inc., own the remaining shares. The pipeline was constructed in 2008-2009 and designed to transport approximately 785 million cubic feet of gas a day and the actual volumes transported fluctuate on a daily basis. The 684-mile pipeline carries natural gas from offshore Nova Scotia through Maine and New Hampshire and eventually to Dracut, Mass., where it links with other major nationwide pipelines. In Maine, there are seven compressor stations, which are designed to boost pressure and increase the gas flow.

     

    “A day like today, it’s running,” said Don Thompson, area manager for the Maine compressor stations, referencing falling temperatures across much of the country.

    Thompson stood before the roomful of mainly Searsmont citizens, along with a few residents of nearby Hope, Monroe and Morrill. Organized by the Searsmont Fire Department, the purpose of the meeting was to better understand what happened Dec. 31 when residents within a 10-plus mile radius were startled by the noise of the venting — described by some as the sound of four jets taking off — rattled their homes just before midnight and raised fears that the station might catch fire.

    For two hours, Thompson fielded questions and caustic criticism, which at times, slipped into personal attacks. Thompson had managed oversight of the New Year’s Eve incident from his home in Cumberland, while engineers in Houston lent technical support by remotely closing valves at key points along the pipeline.

    “I didn’t think you’d leave here wanting to give me a hug,” he said, acknowledging that the venting was a significant event for the area, as well as for the Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline. “I can’t tell you to be comfortable.”

    Nor did Searsmont residents want to hug Thompson, who, in many eyes, represented a large corporation indifferent to local concerns.

    “The system is not good enough,” said one man.

    “The system is not good enough unless you and I do something about it,” said Searsmont resident Jesse Gogan, who stood before the room, passionately urging community action. “If you back down, they will stomp you like a fly.”

     

    What happened

    Thompson attributed the emergency to an ice build-up in one of the isolation valves at the compressor station.

    “A quarter-inch plate froze up,” he said. That was caused by failure of the thermostat governing heat trace, a heating element that runs along pipes to keep them from freezing.

    With the help of a PowerPoint presentation and simple graphics, he explained how that resulted in an emergency shutdown valve blowing open at 11:50 p.m., releasing a plume of gas 100 feet into the air.

    He described several systems that operate and track in parallel with a compressor station, and which are designed to balance each other. 

    Given the extreme cold weather of Dec. 31, with below-zero temperatures, the ice build-up prevented one of the valves from closing, which, in turn, caused the emergency shutdown vent stack to open. That resulted in a trio of alarms that reported low pressure on the line, and sent six pipeline crew members to various points around the state, “to China, Richmond, Dresden and up and down the system,” said Thompson.

    Simultaneously, engineers in Houston shut the system down along a 24-mile stretch, closing the pipeline at points north and south of the station.

    Thompson, who said he bore full responsibility for events that night, fielded company calls, monitored three alarms and a live output of system conditions, and received multiple calls from station neighbors. 

    He said the initial call reported the system was quickly losing mainline pressure, and that set off a series of alarms different than what would transpire if a fire was imminent or under way.

    That 24-mile bottle of gas needed to go somewhere, he said, and was released into the air. Being lighter than air, it rose and dissipated.

    The cloud that witnesses reported seeing consisted of frozen vapor, which rose at supersonic speed; hence, the noise, he said.

    “What you guys heard was venting from the 24-mile bottle,” said Thompson. “It’s pressure. It’s going to release itself. It’s going to find its weakest point.”

    Thirty-seven minutes later, an engineer arrived at the site, traveling from Whitefield. Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline has 32 Maine employees.

    When he arrived in Searsmont, he cleared the ice from the valve and closed it. 

    “What have you done so it doesn’t freeze again,” asked one woman.

    Thompson replied that the system uses heat tape to help deflect ice build-up and the valves have subsequently been reinforced with it.

    Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline is a 684-mile transmission pipeline that transports gas from offshore Nova Scotia to markets in Atlantic Canada and northeastern United States.  
    A joint venture of Spectra Energy Partners (77.53 percent), Emera Inc. (12.92 percent), and ExxonMobil (9.55 percent), Maritimes is headquartered in Halifax and operates an additional business office in Waltham, Massachusetts. 
    The Maritimes system consists of an approximately 30"/24" diameter underground mainline running from Goldboro, Nova Scotia, through New Brunswick to the U.S. border at Baileyville.
    It continues through Maine and New Hampshire into Massachusetts where it connects with the existing North American pipeline grid at Dracut, Massachusetts. The pipeline also extends from Methuen to Beverly, Massachusetts.

    Another man commented that “froze” to him meant two things: Was it mechanically frozen and therefore inoperable, he asked, or was is covered in ice, and incapable of moving.

    Thompson confirmed the latter, and told the room that such ice blockages have occurred nowhere else in the Maine pipeline system.

    He also said he had been in communication with the Searsmont Fire Department through the incident and felt comfortable not calling for public evacuation.

     

    Establish a phone chain, get a local attendant

    While the conversation shifted over the course of two hours between the mechanics of what caused the venting, and how residents want Spectra to improve safety, they began to articulate several firm directives:

    1) Return to the corporation, they told Thompson, and request full-time oversight at the station;

    2) Improve communications, especially emergency communications, via text, email and phone calls.

    3) Clarify emergency protocols with the community, such as when one can start a car without worrying about being a source of ignition for a gas explosion.

    “We will take all suggestions and talk about them,” said Thompson. “And we will get back to you.”

    He was skeptical, however, that his company would concede to hiring a fulltime local attendant.

    Hope resident Will Heils said, “The response might have been quicker if someone was on site.”

    “It’s not in our current plans to staff the station,” said Thompson, later in the meeting, adding that the station is based on an automatic design to run on its own.

    When he said that, others in the room said they had been told by the company in 2007, when plans for the pipeline were just becoming public, that the station was to be manned.

    Searsmont resident Ann Robbins suggested again that the comfort level of the town might rise if a night watchman were hired.

    The reaction time, another man said, “it’s just too slow.”

    That 45-minute dispersal of gas also included dispersal of the odorant ethyl mercaptan, a toxic chemical that is injected into the gas to alert humans that dangerous gas fumes are present. Its side effects include headaches, nausea, weakness, fatigue, incoordination and irritation of the mucous membranes. 

    The current Occupation Health and Safety Administration permissible exposure limit for the chemical is 25 milligrams per cubic foot of air, or 10 parts per million parts of air.

    Several citizens, including parents of small children, wanted to know how much ethyl mercaptan fell into the area as the gas dissipated, but there was no answer for that.

    Thompson was required to immediate incident reports with state and federal government, one to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s compliance office, the other to the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a department of the U.S. Department of Transportation.


    Relationship with the Searsmont Fire Department

    According to Thompson, pipeline personnel visit municipal fire departments on a three-year rotating basis, teaching firefighters about natural gas and pipeline hazards.

    He outlined at the beginning of the meeting the company’s incident action plan is based in standardized procedures for all natural gas pipelines. 

    In the event of incidents, fire departments are to stay as far as possible from the compressor station, establishing a hot zone.

    “Let the station take care of itself,” said Thompson.

    He said the Searsmont Fire Department, “did exactly what we trained them to do over the years.”

    Fire Chief James Ames said at the meeting: “There is no reason for us to go in that gate, nor do we want to, anyway.”

    The chain of command for ensuring the safety of the public ultimately begins with the local fire chief. While the engineer on duty Dec. 31 went to the scene with a gas detector, his communication with the fire chief would determine whether evacuation was advisable.

    “The fire chief is relying on him,” said Thompson. “Ultimately, it’s up to him [fire chief].

    While some residents trickled out of the room as the meeting wore on, a substantial core group remained, and by 8 p.m., many remained focused on changing safety and response protocol at the station.

    What would it take to mandate more staff, they asked. Could a town ordinance influence a major energy corporation, or would they need to work on the federal level through their Congressman, Mike Michaud?

     

     

    Related stories

    Natural gas line in Searsmont blows pressure valve, alarms area residents with noise

    Spectra Energy compressor station offline while engineers investigate Searsmont gas release

    Ice blockage, extreme cold cause of New Year’s Eve Searsmont gas pipeline vent

     



     

    Editorial Director Lynda Clancy can be reached at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 706-6657.