Spill is among worst ever on North Slope

[barbtries]

Source: Anchorage Daily News

Officials have found a 24-inch jagged rupture in a pipeline that began pouring oil and water Nov. 29, creating one of the biggest North Slope crude oil spills ever.

The on-scene coordinator for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, Tom DeRuyter, said Tuesday that the breach on the bottom of the pipe was the biggest he had ever seen and indicative of the incredible pressure the pipeline was under when it split.

Workers located the source of the leak Monday after cleanup crews hauled away spilled crude and contaminated snow and ice that had been obscuring the area.

Read more: http://www.adn.com/front/story/1046914.html

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i searched to make sure this was not a dupe and found news from 2006. hopefully this qualifies.

[JuniperLea]

1. I'm shocked I haven't heard of this before!

This is huge news... horrible news... but it has nothing to do with Tiger's Zipper, so...

Thanks for posting.

[barbtries]

11. thank you

apparently the news just broke today, though it's been leaking since nov 29

[jtrockville]

2. drill baby drill

[KansDem]

4. That leads to "spill baby spill" nt

[Haole Girl]

3. Grrr

:grr:

[onethatcares]

5. so BP is on probation from the last spill,

does their permit to drill get pulled now or do they go to jail?

How do you put a company on probation? Do they make everyone take urine tests or something?

[intheflow]

7. No shit.

Do they receive any government subsidies, like ACORN? Then they need to be shut off from taxpayer funds now, by conservatives' own arguments. :grr:

[ArcticFox]

8. So does the company go to jail now?

How much does the prison industrial complex charge to lock up a multinational corporation?

[WriteDown]

6. How does a rupture like that form?

?

[Arctic Dave]

12. Thirty year old pipe, piss poor maintanence and one good ice plug.

Almost all pipes are above ground so they are exposed to the elements. Sometimes the insulation and heat trace is not enough to keep them from freezing.

[More_liberal_than_mo]

16. The pipes are above ground because

the oil inside is so hot (120 degrees F) it would melt the permafrost if it were underground creating a muddy mess and make the pipe supports unstable. Freezing is not the problem, corrosion and faulty welds are the main problem. There have been other problems caused by drunken hunters on ATVs shooting holes in the pipes and even a still unsolved bombing. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Center+for+Land+Use+Interpretation%3B+Matthew+Coolidge+talks+about...-a0188962456.

.... The pipeline has been struck by bullets several times. The half-inch-thick steel usually just dents, but on October 4, 2001, a hunter named Daniel Lewis shot the pipeline while on a drunken ATV trip with his brother. The hole produced by his .338-caliber rifle caused a jet of oil to spray seventy-five feet out, and almost three hundred thousand gallons of oil were spilled.

Acts of sabotage have also occurred. The largest single spill from the pipeline was in February 1978, when a bomb blast made a one-inch hole through which 670,000 gallons spilled. The person responsible was never identified......

edit:
In this case however I see from the article that ice was the problem. That means that they are using much more water than usual in an attempt to get more oil out of the wells. Injecting water under pressure into old poor performing wells to get more of the oil out is a method that works near the end of a well's productive years. Looks like the extra water cooled the oil/water mixture down to the point it froze.

[Arctic Dave]

19. I work in this oilfield. The line that broke was a produced water line

It is the water that comes in from the formation and is reinjected back into it after going through seperation process. Ice plugs are common.

[barbtries]

24. i'm curious about how it took so long to find the source of the leak

can you elaborate? thank you

[Arctic Dave]

26. First. There is a lot of pipe, hundreds of miles.

Second, it is covered by about four inches of insulation. So where you see the leak won't neccessarily be where the leak is.
Third, not all pipe is near a road and is not readily visible.
Fourth, it is the middle of winter and it is dark for most of the day. Even though they do a weekly fly over of the pipe with an infrared camera they have a lot of pipe to check out.
Fifth, it took a little extra time because they had to make sure the line was depressurized before removing insulation and inpecting the line, the didn't want the plug to give way and have a release of pressure and have the line jump around possibly injuring someone by getting trapped between the lines.

Hope this helped. If you have any more question let me know. I'll try to answer them as best I can. :)

[barbtries]

29. thank you i do appreciate it

i did think it probably had something to do with the length of the pipeline as well as the conditions. didn't think about it being dark though.

[WriteDown]

27. Thanks!

Awesome that you actually work up there.

[Toots]

23. The permafrost is melting

When they built the pipeline they believed the permafrost was perma. It is like cement but getting more like a bog as the days go by. the structure that holds the pipeline is in motion and causing stress.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[WriteDown]

10. Please post a picture of your wind powered car...

We are all to blame.

The world is made of petroleum.

edited to add thought.

[bbinacan]

13. Worst ever?

I'm always curious about this kind of comparison. How bad is worst? If I spilled half a bottle of Round Up in my garage when the previous spill was a quarter bottle, then that would be the worst. In the grand scheme of things, this oil leak tells me nothing about the severity. If no oil had been spilled. and we had a report that one drop had been spilled, than that one drop would be the worst spill ever. I want perspective and context thank you very much.

[barbtries]

15. according to the story,

The working estimate of the spill's size is about 46,000 gallons of crude and produced water, the oily water pumped up from the well.

while searching for dupes i found some threads regarding a 2006 spill. i think it was in the neighborhood of 20,000 gallons.

[bluedigger]

14. That's It, BP!

Now you're on



DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!

[tomm2thumbs]

17. not paying attention? ''one ice plug measured approximately 1,500 feet in length''

I don't know about you, but for something to freeze that huge, someone had got to not be paying attention here

[laundry_queen]

21. You are right.

There are people who are supposed to be in charge of pipeline maintenance. They often send 'pigs' down there to check on the pipe's condition. They then treat any problems they are having - corrosion, water etc. Dh used to do this for a living. There could be several people at fault here. The pipeline operator, the chemical company treating the pipe, or the pipeline owners themselves (ie - too cheap to treat the line as they should, only purchase half the chemical they need, etc). At dh's old company, when this happened, and it happens more often than you might think, people worried about their job for sure.

[jwirr]

18. Coming attractions for northern MN? This is what I fear. Our beautiful

woods polluted until we cannot save it.

[winyanstaz]

20. K & R....

Oil is soooo over..time to get rid of it for good.
This makes me weep for all the wildlife killed by this.

[kirby]

22. But...

I thought drilling in Alaska and expanding to ANRW was super duper safe. Wasnt that the previous election mantra?

[undeterred]

25. Was Todd Palin out there?

[Steerpike]

28. The company is working on it right now.

I think 75% of it is water and the rest is crude. It's a mess and they'll get a huge fine and a slap on the wrist. No wildlife was harmed. It would have to be one real unlucky carabou or polar bear that was standing there when it burst.