Although it was widely reported to have been the worst single natural gas leak in U.S. history, and left a bigger carbon footprint that the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the environmental disaster at Aliso Canyon caused little preventive change beyond the borders of California.
The gassy blast, which went on for 118 days between 2015 and 2016, occurred because Aliso Canyon was not intended for natural gas storage -- it was a re-purposed former oil well with high-pressured natural gas flowing through a single unprotected pipe, rather than multiple concentric pipes with safety valves designed to hold pressurized gas. More gas leaked from that single pipe than it would take to power 80,000 homes for a year. More than 11,000 people were relocated after experiencing headaches, nausea and severe nosebleeds.
California implemented new inspection protocols, but nationwide, more than 10,000 wells have the same single-pipe construction. Nearly 300 of the 400 natural underground storage facilities in the U.S. have one or more of these wells, in 32 of our 50 states. In 2016, President Obama signed the PIPES Act, authorizing the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to implement changes proposed post-Alison Canyon. Little can be found in terms of actual action from PIPES 2016 thus far. But for what it's worth, a Progress Tracker for the earlier Pipeline Safety Act of 2011 shows that 33 of 42 mandates are completed. Hope could be on the (not Deepwater) horizon, but only if things get fast-tracked... and one of 10,000 still-existing re-purposed underground wells doesn't burst a seam and pass a silent-but-deadly gas attack on another unsuspecting community.
No comments:
Post a Comment