ANR PIPELINE CO — Gas transmission and gathering — incident on 2012-07-13

Gas transmission and gathering incident in Not Within a Municipality, KENDALL County, IL. Reported cause: EQUIPMENT FAILURE. Reported consequences: 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 1 NATURAL GAS released, $298,000 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: 20160051.

Operator ID: 405.

Reported incident date: 7/13/2012 11:30.

Location detail: 795.4

Cause detail: COMPRESSOR OR COMPRESSOR-RELATED EQUIPMENT

Cause detail: UNIT 1009 WAS STARTED AT ABOUT 0820 THE MORNING OF JULY 13 2012. UNIT WENT DOWN AT 0900 DUE TO HIGH DISCHARGE TEMPERATURES. ON-SITE STAFF WAS IN MEETING AND DID NOT KNOW UNIT WENT DOWN UNTIL GAS CONTROL CALLED AT 1030. BY THAT TIME HIGH TEMPERATURES HAD DISSIPATED. HIGH TEMP ALARMS WERE RESET. AT 1130 A LOCAL START OF THE UNIT WAS INITIATED. WHEN TECHNICIAN RETURN TO CONTROL ROOM AFTER HALTING START-UP OF NEARBY UNIT, HE HEARD AND FELT AN EXPLOSION. EXPLOSION OCCURRED INSIDE BLOWDOWN EXHAUST SILENCER, DAMAGING SILENCER AND NEARBY CONNECTING FACILITIES. NO PERSONNEL WERE INJURED AS A RESULT OF THE EXPLOSION. IT WAS BELIEVED THAT GAS LEAKED BY A FUEL LINE BLOCK/BLEED VALVE AND SOME ACCUMULATED GAS IN THE SILENCER IGNITED. IGNITION WAS PROBABLY INITIATED FROM MECHANICAL SPARK FROM TURBOCHARGER, A NORMAL OCCURRENCE.

PHMSA trend classification: significant incident, not serious.

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

PHMSA indexed costs: $298,038 reported total cost, $156,988.334 in 1984 dollars, $386,574.764 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.