SHELL PIPELINE CORP — Gas transmission and gathering — incident on 2013-11-15

Gas transmission and gathering incident in GRAMERCY, ASCENSION, ST. JAMES AND ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST County, LA. Reported cause: MATERIAL FAILURE OF PIPE OR WELD. Reported consequences: 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 302 OTHER GAS released, $6,100,000 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: 20130114.

Operator ID: 18273.

Reported incident date: 11/15/2013 8:22.

Location detail: 37047-110524

Cause detail: ORIGINAL MANUFACTURING-RELATED (NOT GIRTH WELD OR OTHER WELDS FORMED IN THE FIELD)

Cause detail: A MANUAL SURVEY OF THE DRY GAS ROW WAS BEING CONDUCTED AS DRY GAS WAS BEING RE-INTRODUCED TO THE PIPELINE. DURING THIS ASSESSMENT MULTIPLE LOCATION WERE REPORTED BY THE MAINTENANCE CREW ALONG THE ROW. PIPELINE WAS SHUTDOWN, ISOLATED AND BEGAN TO FLARE THE CONTENTS OF THE PIPELINE. THE PIPELINE WAS EVACUATED BY FLARING, FILLED WITH NITROGEN TO DETERMINE LOCATIONS WHICH INDICATE LOSS OF PRIMARY CONTAINMENT OF THE PIPELINE. PLAN OF ACTION TO TEST THE PIPELINE WITH NITROGEN, THEN WATER, THEN NITROGEN. ALL IDENTIFIED LOCATIONS WILL BE REMEDIATED. LINE WILL REMAIN DOWN UNTIL TESTS, REPAIRS ARE COMPLETED. IN TOTAL 11 LOCATIONS WERE IDENTIFIED. REPAIR METHOD WAS ONE CUT OUT AND 10 LOCATIONS WITH REPAIRS BY FULL ENCIRCLEMENT SLEEVES. THE PIPELINE WAS THEN HYRDOTESTED WITH WATER AND ESTABLISHED A NEW MOP OF 1052 PSI. THE LINE WAS THEN PRESSURED WITH NITROGEN TO 1052 PSI AND HELD FOR 8 HOURS TO VERIFY INTEGRITY OF PIPELINE. BOTH TESTS WERE SUCCESSFULL. PIPELINE WAS RETURNED TO SERVICE ON FEB. 21, 2014.

PHMSA trend classification: significant incident, not serious.

PHMSA standardized cause: MATERIAL FAILURE OF PIPE OR WELD — MANUFACTURING-RELATED.

PHMSA indexed costs: $6,522,943 reported total cost, $3,380,595.61 in 1984 dollars, $8,302,434.678 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.