NATURAL GAS PIPELINE CO OF AMERICA (KMI) — Gas transmission and gathering — incident on 2019-01-25

Gas transmission and gathering incident in Not Within a Municipality, LOUISA County, IA. Reported cause: NATURAL FORCE DAMAGE. Reported consequences: 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 5679 NATURAL GAS released, $0 reported property damage. Operator-reported incident data submitted to PHMSA, generally within 30 days. Records may be supplemented or corrected and do not represent final agency causal findings.

Report number: 20190035.

Operator ID: 13120.

Reported incident date: 1/25/2019 1:28.

Location detail: 9.7

Cause detail: TEMPERATURE

Cause detail: WITH EXTREME COLD TEMPERATURE OF APPROXIMATELY -6 DEGREES F AND WIND CHILL OF APPROXIMATELY -21 DEGREE F, SUSPECTED LIQUIDS IN THE RELIEF VALVE SENSING LINE AND RELIEF VALVE PILOT FROZE CAUSING THE RELIEF VALVE TO PREMATURELY OPEN. SAID RELIEF VALVE IS LOCATED OUTSIDE THE COMPRESSOR BUILDING ON THE UNIT 9 DISCHARGE PIPE. LOCAL SOFTWARE RECOGNIZED THE RELIEF VALVE EVENT AND IMMEDIATELY SHUT DOWN UNIT 9 HOWEVER THE RELIEF VALVE CONTINUED TO RELEASE GAS. NIGHT SHIFT STAFF WERE ON SITE WORKING THE COLD WEATHER SHIFT AND INVESTIGATED THE GAS RELEASE WITH IMMEDIATE ATTEMPT TO RESET THE RELIEF VALVE. THE STAFF APPLIED HEAT TO THE RELIEF VALVE TO THAW ANY SUSPECTED ICE AND MANUALLY CLOSED THE LINE VALVE TO ISOLATE THE RELIEF VALVE; THE RELIEF VALVE THEN RESET. STAFF RETURNED THE ISOLATION VALVE TO THE OPEN POSITION AND RETURNED UNIT 9 TO SERVICE.

PHMSA trend classification: not significant, not serious.

PHMSA standardized cause: NATURAL FORCE DAMAGE — TEMPERATURE.

PHMSA indexed costs: $13,740 reported total cost, $14,182.381 in 1984 dollars, $17,477.454 in current-year dollars.

PHMSA trend flags, standardized causes, and indexed costs are analytical fields added to operator-reported incident data. They do not represent final agency causal findings.