TENNESSEE GAS PIPELINE COMPANY — Gas transmission and gathering — incident on 2016-02-14

Gas transmission and gathering incident in CHARLTON, WORCESTER County, MA. Reported cause: EQUIPMENT FAILURE. Reported consequences: 0 fatalities, 0 injuries, 6176 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: 20160020.

Operator ID: 19160.

Reported incident date: 2/14/2016 0:15.

Location detail: STATION 264

Cause detail: MALFUNCTION OF CONTROL/RELIEF EQUIPMENT

Cause detail: ON 2/13/2016 TGP PERSONNEL RECEIVED NOTIFICATION THAT A UNIT IN STATION 264 FELL OFFLINE. AFTER PERSONNEL ARRIVED ON SITE, THEY VERIFIED THAT GAS WAS VENTING. PERSONNEL THEN SHUT-IN THE STATION AND THIS ACTION STOPPED THE RELEASE OF GAS. IT WAS DISCOVERED THAT THERE WERE RELAY ISSUES WITHIN THE PLC AND THIS CAUSED THE UNIT TO NOT PROPERLY SHUT DOWN IN "SAFE MODE", AND AS A RESULT THE UNIT SUCTION AND DISCHARGE VALVES REMAINED OPEN. TGP PERSONNEL CONFIRMED THE WIRING AND INSTALLATION OF THE BACKUP RELAY LOGIC CONTROL OF THE UNIT AND REPLACED PLC COMPONENTS IN THE UNIT VALVE CIRCUITRY PORTION OF THE BACK UP RELAY SYSTEM.

PHMSA trend classification: not significant, not serious.

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

PHMSA indexed costs: $16,598 reported total cost, $17,671.725 in 1984 dollars, $21,698.194 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.