COLUMBIA GAS TRANSMISSION, LLC — Gas transmission and gathering — incident on 2018-09-17

Gas transmission and gathering incident in SENECA ROCKS, PENDLETON County, WV. Reported cause: EQUIPMENT FAILURE. Reported consequences: 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 4551 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: 20180103.

Operator ID: 2616.

Reported incident date: 9/17/2018 9:00.

Location detail: SENECA CS

Cause detail: MALFUNCTION OF CONTROL/RELIEF EQUIPMENT

Cause detail: ON 09/17/2018 AT 9:00 AM EST, THE EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN SYSTEM WAS ACCIDENTLY TRIGGERED AT SENECA COMPRESSOR STATION (CS) SENECA CS IS LOCATED AT SENECA ROCKS, PENDLETON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA. THE ESD ACTIVATED AS DESIGN WHEN A FIRE-EYE DETECTION DEVICE DETECTED A FLASH OF LIGHT FROM NEARBY CONSTRUCTION PROJECT AND TRIGGERED THE ESD SYSTEM. NORMALLY, THE GAS RELEASED FROM THE ESD SYSTEM WOULD NOT EXCEED 3000 MCF BUT ONE OF THE 8" BLOW-OFF VALVES DID NOT CLOSE PROPERLY AND CONTINUED TO BLOW GAS TO THE ATMOSPHERE FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME, RELEASING AN ESTIMATED 4551 MCF.

PHMSA trend classification: not significant, not serious.

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

PHMSA indexed costs: $12,151 reported total cost, $11,346.678 in 1984 dollars, $13,931.998 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.