(Gas pipeline) Explosion reported in Northeast Texas

[rainbow4321]

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8A29H9O0.html

A natural gas pipeline exploded early Friday, forcing the evacuation of homes up to a mile away and sending a fireball 500 feet into the air, authorities said.

The Harrison County Plant, eight miles south of Marshall, had three workers on duty at the time of the blast, said Entergy spokeswoman Kelle Barfield. The gas fire was out by daybreak, but the blast had caused a secondary fire at the plant's cooling tower, Barfield said. She said she had no details on that fire.

The pipeline is owned by Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc. A Kinder Morgan spokesman said Friday that he had no details on the blast.

"At this point, they are working to establish what may have caused the rupture in the first place," Trooper Jeanne Steeley told Shreveport, La., television station KSLA. The explosion was felt by residents within several miles of the facility.
____________________


Company history w/ shrub and Enron


http://www.whitehouseforsale.org/ContributorsAndPaybacks/pioneer_profile.cfm?pioneer_ID=37

Richard Kinder is an ex-president of Enron Corp., which was George W. Bush’s top career patron in 2000, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Kinder and ex-Enron pipeline executive Bill Morgan bought out Enron Liquids Pipeline in 1997 and formed Kinder Morgan Energy Partners and its parent company: Kinder Morgan, Inc. Kinder Morgan is one of the country’s largest gas pipeline interests, worth approximately $10 billion. A 2003 Kinder Morgan pipeline failure caused gasoline shortages in Phoenix after spilling an estimated 16,000 gallons near Tucson. Arizona environmental officials accused the company of contaminating the area’s groundwater in November 2003. “We narrowly averted a disaster,” said Department of Environmental Quality Director Steve Owens, citing a spray of thousands of gallons of flammable gas in a residential neighborhood. “We need to make sure we never again have to rely on luck regarding this pipeline.” Then-Governor George Bush appointed Kinder to his 1996 Citizen’s Committee on Property Tax Relief along with fellow Pioneers John Avila and Wales Madden.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. I spent a few minutes...

looking for a source on just how many such incidents happen, and came up with this for the time being:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-one-category.tcl?topic=TimeBomb%202000%20(Y2000)&category=Explosions%2FFires%2FHAZMAT%20Accidents%20(New)

Not exactly a scientific list, but I don't have time to dig out more.

I spent many years as an underwriter insuring such things as tankers and oil terminals, and this sort of thing is nothing new to me. In almost every case, the cause was someone saving a buck or sleeping on the job. Safety standards are well documented and understood and they work, but too many companies simply can't be bothered to comply. If management simply took the standards seriously, most of these catastrophies simply wouldn't happen.

With all the bullshit about terrorism, what we have most to fear is our own people saving a buck or just plain fucking up.

[grasswire]

2. the important thing to note, it seems...

...is that this kind of "accident" causes a shortage and that drives up prices.

[harlinchi]

3. Add to the 'accidents' the number of refineries which are undergoing...

... some sort of maintenance prior to the summer driving season and the manipulation of pump prices becomes evident. Remember how the energy bill began as a power transmission concern, after the blackout. Broadening policy discussion only serves to allow the GOP to find how their corporate constituents can best be enriched, uhh, I mean served.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. I never, in 20 years...

involved in the business, came across anyone who deliberately caused one of these to drive up prices.

Some of them lost out because with the higher prices, they had nothing to sell.

That's not to say that it's never been done, but I never heard about it.

[fasttense]

9. Up until the great and wonderful ENRON

no one had heard about shutting off and lowering electrical power supplies to drive up prices either. It's the new thing (or an old thing come back to haunt us). Create a demand by reducing the supply.

[bunny planet]

7. Yup!

His Fraudulency really wanted us to have oil at $25. per barrel, he really did! But it's hard work.

[Felix Mala]

5. My gas company already left a message saying I needed to pay

$40 more on the bill the just sent me because they couldn't foresee this happening.

[LT TX]

6. I'm from Marshall, Tx-

Here is a link to the story from my hometown paper, the Marshall News Messenger:


"A sulfuric rotten egg smell wafted through the streets of downtown Marshall Tuesday afternoon, acting as an olfactory warning that natural gas was on the lose.

But officials were on top of their game and responded quickly when they got the call that a natural gas pipeline had been damaged by a construction worker who is part of a crew renovating one of Marshall's well-known historical buildings."

http://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/news/content/news/stories/2005/05/12/20050512MARgas_leak.html

[TreasonousBastard]

10. A similar thing happened in Edison, NJ...

a few years ago, when a backhoe hit a main and the sparks caused a huge explosion, wiping out a big part of a condo complex.

Within a day or two, lawyers had set up temporary offices by the huge pit the explosion left, but that's another story...

Joisey, and I suppose most other places, has strict rules about digging and hotlines to call about phone and power lines, gas and water pipes... There's all sorts of things undergound that can be broken, cut, or otherwise cause great trouble if messed with.

Part of the problem is that the sub- sub- contractor who actually does the digging tends to rely on assurances from other contractors that "everything's taken care of." After the explosion, nobody knew who made the call, or if anyone had actually bothered to make the call.

I don't know if it made it throught the process, but one recommendation was to get "certification" that there was nothing dangerous in the dig area.

Another problem is that the hotlines and lists aren't all that accurate. Newark Airport had it's entire power killed a while back when the power lines weren't exactly where they should have been, according to the map. At least that's what the contractor who accidentally cut them tried to prove-- the whole thing ended up in total confusion over who was at fault.

To make matters slightly worse, Joisey has taken down much of this information from its websites, libraries and other public areas, claiming that terrorists could use the information to cause catastrophe. Personally, I'm more a lot more worried about making the information harder to get causing more catastrophes from our own people.

[bunny planet]

8. No sense in having us worry our little heads about the real energy crisis

looming. Let's just blame higher prices on those pesky oil refinery explosions for awhile.