文章基本信息

标题：Fragile pipelines pose an increasing risk in gas-hungry U.S.
本地全文：下载
作者：naureen s. malik
期刊名称：World Oil Magazine
出版年度：2018
期号：10
出版社：Gulf Publishing Co.
摘要：LAWRENCE, MASSACHUSETTS (Bloomberg) -- The kind of dramatic scenes that played out in suburban Massachusetts last month following a series of explosions and fires may serve as a warning of what lies ahead for the U.S., where an increasing reliance on natural gas is running up against aging infrastructure. While there’s no firm conclusion about what caused the series of deadly blasts on Sept. 14, a preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report on the incident released last week says it was linked to work being carried out to replace old pipes. And across the U.S. there’s an awful lot of old pipes: In all, the country has about 80,000 miles of unprotected bare steel and cast or wrought-iron natural gas pipes -- enough to wrap around the Earth three times -- much of which dates back to the early 1900s. "Aging infrastructure is clearly an issue in the U.S., especially on the East Coast where they have a lot of old cast iron pipes that are well known to fail," said Carl Weimer, the executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust in Bellingham, Washington. While those lines represent just 3.6% of all the pipes that deliver gas to consumers nationally, they pose the highest risk and account for 41% of all fatalities, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. PHMSA, as the regulator is also called, has urged operators to accelerate plans to replace the oldest lines because decades of wear and degradation has made them more brittle and prone to leaks or ruptures from ground movement. Exposure to rain and freezing temperatures is also a problem (modern gas lines installed in towns and cities are made of plastic, which is corrosion-resistant and less brittle, or from protected steel that won’t rust as easily). To be sure, the natural gas industry has come a long way technologically since it began about 200 years ago, with improvements such as new materials and inspection tools, said Christina Sames, V.P., operations and engineering with the American Gas Association, a Washington-based industry group. Utilities continue to spend billions of dollars to replace old lines. In Ohio, for example, the Public Utilities Commission oversees programs undertaken by utilities including Duke Energy Corp. But while those lines are being ripped out and replaced, there’s a huge build-out of new pipelines, driven by the shale-gas boom. And that’s prompted concerns that the regulatory environment hasn’t kept pace.