SOUTHERN STAR CENTRAL GAS PIPELINE, INC — Gas transmission and gathering — incident on 2015-02-26

Gas transmission and gathering incident in Not Within a Municipality, COWLEY County, KS. Reported cause: OTHER INCIDENT CAUSE. Reported consequences: 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 1623 NATURAL GAS released, $375,000 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: 20150033.

Operator ID: 31711.

Reported incident date: 2/26/2015 13:00.

Location detail: 110/69+80

Cause detail: UNKNOWN

Cause detail: UPON INVESTIGATING AN EXPOSED PIPELINE ALONG GROUSE CREEK BANK NORTH OF DEXTER KS, A LEAK WAS DETECTED ON THE WEST BANK. A PIPE TO SOIL TEST INDICATED THAT THE EXPOSED PIPELINE IS ABANDONED AND NO LONGER ACTIVE. WHILE CONDUCTING THIS PIPE TO SOIL IN THE CREEK THE SSC TECHNICIAN NOTICED BUBBLES IN THE WATER. GAS WAS EASILY DETECTED WITH CGI BEFORE AND AFTER PROBING THE GROUND ON THE WEST BANK. AFTER CLEARING ON BOTH THE EAST AND WEST BANKS AND DIGGING AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO THE CREAK BANKS IT WAS DETERMINED THAT THE LEAK WAS LOCATED UNDER THE CREEK AND WOULD REQUIRE A NEW BORE TO REPLACE THE PIPE. WHEN DETERMINATION WAS MADE THAT A BORE WOULD BE REQUIRED THE NRC WAS NOTIFIED. THE PIPE COULD NOT BE REMOVED TO INSPECT FOR A CAUSE OF THE LEAK.

PHMSA trend classification: significant incident, not serious.

PHMSA standardized cause: ALL OTHER CAUSES — UNKNOWN.

PHMSA indexed costs: $386,563 reported total cost, $195,654.896 in 1984 dollars, $477,185.722 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.