MOJAVE PIPELINE OPERATING COMPANY — Gas transmission and gathering — incident on 2015-12-24

Gas transmission and gathering incident in DAGGETT, SAN BERNADINO County, CA. Reported cause: EQUIPMENT FAILURE. Reported consequences: 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 14707 NATURAL GAS released, $3,129 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: 20160006.

Operator ID: 840.

Reported incident date: 12/24/2015 20:08.

Location detail: DAGGETT STN.

Cause detail: COMPRESSOR OR COMPRESSOR-RELATED EQUIPMENT

Cause detail: ON 12/24/15 AT 6:30 PM PST, THE DAGGETT FIRE DEPARTMENT NOTIFIED MOJAVE KM PERSONNEL OF AN ODOR COMPLAINT COMING FROM THE DAGGETT COMPRESSOR STATION. AT 6:39 PM: A TECHNICIAN WAS DISPATCHED TO INVESTIGATE THE COMPLAINT. AT 8:08 PM: THE TECHNICIAN ARRIVED ON SITE AND AFTER INSPECTING THE SITE HE DISCOVERED THAT THE UNIT VENT VALVE WAS OPEN AND VENTING GAS. AT 8:42 PM: THE TECH MANUALLY ISOLATED THE LEAK BY CLOSING THE LOADING VALVE. AT 10:12 PM: THE NRC WAS NOTIFIED OF THE RELEASE BY KM CODES AND STANDARDS PERSONNEL. AN INTERNAL INVESTIGATION WAS PERFORMED AND IT WAS DETERMINED THAT THE ROOT CAUSE FOR THIS INCIDENT INVOLVED A FAULTY LIMIT SWITCH THAT RESULTED IN A SUCTION VALVE NOT CLOSING PROPERLY. MOJAVE PERSONNEL WERE ATTEMPTING TO START THIS UNIT AT DAGGETT STATION AS A PART OF THEIR ANNUAL MAINTENANCE ON DECEMBER 22, 2015. DAGGETT STATION WAS OFFLINE AT THE TIME OF THE INCIDENT. THE LIMIT SWITCH WAS REPLACED AND FREQUENCY OF INSPECTIONS/MAINTENANCE ON LIMIT SWITCHES AND VALVES HAVE BEEN INCREASED.

PHMSA trend classification: not significant, not serious.

PHMSA standardized cause: EQUIPMENT FAILURE — PUMP/COMPRESSOR OR PUMP/COMPRESSOR-RELATED EQUIPMENT.

PHMSA indexed costs: $32,583 reported total cost, $28,880.349 in 1984 dollars, $37,399.036 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.