SOUTHERN NATURAL GAS CO — Gas transmission and gathering — incident on 2016-09-13

Gas transmission and gathering incident in Not Within a Municipality, UPSON County, GA. Reported cause: EQUIPMENT FAILURE. Reported consequences: 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 9372 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: 20160080.

Operator ID: 18516.

Reported incident date: 9/13/2016 20:46.

Location detail: 346.954

Cause detail: MALFUNCTION OF CONTROL/RELIEF EQUIPMENT

Cause detail: UNIT #3 TAKEN OFF LINE MANUALLY; LATER AUTOMATIC 3-INCH VENT VALVE OPENED TO BLOW DOWN UNIT #3 PIPING FOR STATION SAFETY; NORMALLY A RELEASE OF 50MCF NATURAL GAS; WHEN UNIT #3 WAS COMING OFF LINE, 18-INCH SUCTION VALVE HAD NOT FULLY CLOSED EVEN THOUGH LIMIT SWITCHES WERE MET ALLOWING GAS SUPPLY TO THE VENT SYSTEM; CONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS AT STATION, LOCAL MANUAL, THEREFORE SCADA WAS TEMPORARILY DISABLED; ON SITE CONSTRUCTION SECURITY GUARD NOTIFIED STATION OPERATOR OF THE VENTING; STATION OPERATOR RETURNED TO STATION YARD AND MANUALLY CLOSED SUCTION VALVE; SAID 18-INCH VALVE IS CURRENTLY OPERATING WITH NO ISSUES.

PHMSA trend classification: not significant, not serious.

PHMSA standardized cause: EQUIPMENT FAILURE — MALFUNCTION OF CONTROL/RELIEF EQUIPMENT.

PHMSA indexed costs: $26,405 reported total cost, $28,028.068 in 1984 dollars, $34,506.369 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.