CONSUMERS ENERGY CO — Gas transmission and gathering — incident on 2015-10-10

Gas transmission and gathering incident in WHITE PIGEON, SAINT JOSEPH County, MI. Reported cause: EQUIPMENT FAILURE. Reported consequences: 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 13500 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: 20150134.

Operator ID: 2748.

Reported incident date: 10/10/2015 5:37.

Location detail: 638

Cause detail: MALFUNCTION OF CONTROL/RELIEF EQUIPMENT

Cause detail: ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2015 AT APPROXIMATELY 05:37 CONSUMERS ENERGY GAS CONTROL REPRESENTATIVE RECEIVED AN ALARM AT THE WHITE PIGEON COMPRESSOR STATION IDENTIFYING A POTENTIAL PROBLEM WITH THE EMERGENCY SHUT-DOWN SYSTEM (ESD) IN PLANT #3. THE WHITE PIGEON COMPRESSOR STATION IS LOCATED IN WHITE PIGEON, MICHIGAN (ST. JOSEPH COUNTY) A STATION MECHANIC ARRIVED AT THE LOCATION AT APPROXIMATELY 06:02 AND OBSERVED GAS BLOWING FROM FIREGATE VALVE #638. THE MECHANIC MANUALLY CLOSED THE REDUNDANT VALVE, VALVE #639 SHUTTING DOWN THE BLOWING GAS AT APPROXIMATELY 06:09. THERE WERE NO INJURIES OR SIGNIFICANT PROPERTY DAMAGE ASSOCIATED WITH THE GAS RELEASE. SUBSEQUENT INVESTIGATION OF THE INCIDENT DETERMINED A FAILED OPERATOR RESULTING FROM A BLOWN FUSE IN THE ACTUATOR CAUSED THE VALVE TO PERFORMED AN UNINTENDED VALVE TRAVEL SEQUENCE CAUSING THE VALVE TO FAIL SAFE IN THE OPEN POSITION AND RELEASE GAS. CONSUMERS ENERGY IS CONTINUING TO COLLABORATE WITH THE ROTORK REPRESENTATIVE TO EXPLORE EQUIPMENT DESIGN OPTIONS TO PROVIDE AN ADVANCE TROUBLE INDICATION WITHOUT INADVERTENTLY PERFORMING AN IMMEDIATE ESD ON FAILURE OF THE FUSE. ADDITIONAL INTERNAL MEASURES HAVE ALSO BEEN PUT IN PLACE TO MINIMIZE THE POTENTIAL FOR RE-OCCURRENCE.

PHMSA trend classification: significant incident, not serious.

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

PHMSA indexed costs: $102,488 reported total cost, $94,273.302 in 1984 dollars, $116,854.73 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.