KINETICA ENERGY EXPRESS LLC — Gas transmission and gathering — incident on 2013-12-15

Gas transmission and gathering incident. Reported cause: INCORRECT OPERATION. Reported consequences: 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 1000 NATURAL GAS released, $100 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: 20140005.

Operator ID: 38987.

Reported incident date: 12/15/2013 10:30.

Cause detail: EQUIPMENT NOT INSTALLED PROPERLY

Cause detail: ON 12/15/2013 KINETICA GAS CONTROL WAS NOTIFIED BY FIELDWOOD OPERATIONS PERSONNEL ON THE SABINE PASS PLATFORM. THEY IDENTIFIED A LIGHT SHEEN IN THE WATER ABOUT 300' FROM THE PLATFORM. THEY HAD ALREADY SHUT IN THEIR PIPELINE TO DETERMINE IF THEY WERE THE SOURCE OF THE SHEEN. THEIR SHUT IN DID NOT ELIMINATE THE PROBLEM SO THEY MADE CONTACT WITH KINETICA. WE DISPATCHED OUR PERSONNEL TO THE SCENE, THEY COMMUNICATE MORE ACCURATE COORDINATES TO OUR PIPELINE DIRECTOR WHO ADVISED THEM TO ISOLATE THE PIPELINE SECTION FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION. A DIVE VESSEL WAS DISPATCHED TO THE LOCATION TO INVESTIGATE AND IDENTIFIED TINY BUBBLES WERE BEING EMITTED FROM A FLANGED SUBSEA CONNECTION. DUE TO POOR WEATHER CONDITIONS THEY RETURNED TO THE DOCK AND ARE SCHEDULED TO RETURN TO THE LOCATION AND COMPLETE AN O-RING REPLACEMENT. ON 3/3/2014 REPLACEMENT OF THE FLANGE GASKET AND O-RING WAS COMPLETED. AN INSPECTION OF THE MATERIALS INDICATED THAT DAMAGE OCCURRED DURING THE ORIGINAL INSTALLATION, WHICH OVER TIME ALLOWED FOR THE O-RING TO FLATTEN AND ALLOW THE PASSAGE OF NATURAL GAS. ALTHOUGH ORIGINAL INSTALLATION OCCURRED IN 1981, WE WILL USE THIS AS A LESSONS LEARNED FOR FUTURE INSTALLATIONS AND REVIEW OUR CONSTRUCTION PROCURES FOR POTENTIAL AREA OF IMPROVEMENT.

PHMSA trend classification: significant incident, not serious.

PHMSA standardized cause: INCORRECT OPERATION — INCORRECT INSTALLATION.

PHMSA indexed costs: $593,290 reported total cost, $311,165.337 in 1984 dollars, $751,611.584 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.