Another pipeling spill makes national news!
 

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/0...hp_ref=ca-news

So a 100L spill is now enough to make national news, and have the chicken littles freakin' out.

To put this in perspective this spill amounts to less than the amount of milk our family drinks in a month.

I saw this on the news yesterday and thought they either misspoke or I misheard the 100l part... I guess not

Gotta give them credit that it wasn't measured in mililitres

This is the type of thing that pipelines should present as a positive thing.

This is just over 1/2 a barrel of oil. This is less milk than a family drinks in a month, as you say. And systems were in place to detect, and contain it such that there were no significant impacts.

Absolutely. Oil companies seem to do a pizz poor job selling and promoting themselves.

Obviously they also do a pizz poor job of maintaining or operating their "flow metre"s as well.

If the impulse tubing taps or whatever are so loose they can't hold operating pressure without leaking or blowing out, then somebody is doing something wrong. Same thing if a manifold was left in the wrong position(s). Depending on some pressure loss or mass balance alarm coming in to head office instead of hiring more instrumentation people to actually go out and check the equipment once in a while is false economy.

This all smells like a company trying to cheap out on instrument maintenance & monitoring; leaving themselves wide open to a bunch of idiot greenies & treehuggers at the worst possible time. At least they could broadcast the details of exactly what went wrong & how that situation will be improved.

Why would they say "exactly what went wrong" now???..you just posted on a public forum what you "think" may have happened and for the eco warriors whether that is right or wrong they have the "solid info" that it was the oil companies cheaping out

How does your family drink over 100L of milk in a month?

I mean, I like milk too, but that’s a huge amount

Stating exactly what happened gives them a chance to come clean, quell any further speculation, and show they actually care enough about the problem to fix the root cause of it, whether technical or procedural. Covering up details on the other hand just fans political fires, giving radicals exactly what they want.

It also gives anyone else in the industry in the same situation information to check their own operations and make sure it doesn't happen there. It's simple professionalism.

If they take issue with 'cheapening out' on maintenance or equipment, this is a great opportunity to prove otherwise. Or to fix the problem. I have never heard of any operating company spending too much on maintenance or good equipment or good people.

I’m sure they will release why it occurred and say they will repair it, but how do you think they know already what happened? Usually it takes a few days to at least get the right information after an incident occurred and a good idea why. We don’t run on whatever the operator says anymore.

im thinking the protesters did it, sounds like what they would do.

Arty I take a different view of it. The monitoring equipment or whatever procedures that are in place worked and I'm gonna figure it worked well. How many litres does that pipe contain in a mile? I don't know but I'll guess that 100L is a drop in the bucket. Dont know what you drive but I'm gonna guess by the high and mighty attitude you've never had a oil leak? Did you fix it right away?

Next week it will be a bit bigger of a spill. Then the next week even bigger.
Then whoops time to shut down the pipeline for a major inspection/ overhaul.
Sorry Bc you have to source your oil and fuel elsewhere for a while until we fix the pipeline.

Backup spill monitoring is great, but is not a substitute for getting things right in the first place. The two main concerns here are first, that baskets of many contributing factors cause the big problems. Just like the crash of the Concorde FL4590 where elimination of some of the 'holes in the cheese' may have prevented the main catastrophe.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqOcYhzWUZY

And second, that right across most industries profitability has driven the cheapening of all kinds of systems for years to the point they have no resilience or 'bench' anymore.

Is that the case here? We don't know yet, because real, detailed information is needed to know, not some vague press release. 100 liters is not the concern. Proper equipment and procedure is. I look forward to the details of what should prove to be a relatively simple event.

I have a very nice Lazy-boy armchair recliner in my living room.
It is my chair , and my chair alone.

However sitting in it I don't get overwhelmed with the expertise that seems to flow often when stuff like this happens and a thread like this is started.

I guess I am not one of the many "arm-chair" experts.

Who are they going to promote through? The media pics and choses what they promote.

Maybe getting even smaller events reported is a good thing, just to keep companies a bit more honest in their responsibilities ie maintenance, etc.

When I first heard of this spill and there was no mention of the cause my first thought is that some anti pipeline knumbscal caused the release!

I haven’t heard what the cause was so I guessing it’s still under investigation

BTW
growing up in a family of six we collectively consumed 40 litres of milk every week.

BW

Perhaps the incidents should be reported for truck and rail spill statistics vs pipeline... I don't know about you guys, but I've never saw a pipeline fall off the tracks and blow up a town....

Did you get that from the Huff post article or is there more info some where else?
Sound s like an ESD caused transient over pressure event.

I would guess 2 teenaged boys.

We'd go through 4L milk/day with my stepsons. I monitored them, once, and at least one was eating something every 20 minutes, all day long.

So, even in a regular February, they were going through about 112 l of milk.

You should probably have stopped after your first sentence.

San Bruno is one. Olympic in Bellingham Washington is another. When they blow, they blow big.

This spill is smaller than the size of most gas tanks on trucks. Maybe we should be reporting spills every time there's a car accident. Hell, I've seen bigger spills on sites due to truckers not draining their hoses properly. Yet nothing in the news. But KM has a "spill", and the world (sorry BC) is in an uproar.

Who knows what happened.. Did something fail? was it vandalized? incorrectly engineered?

To me, Seems like their "systems" worked pretty good to keep the spill to a minimum.

The two pipeline explosions you mentioned killed 11 people combined while Lac Megantic killed 47 people in one swoop. Instead of stopping after his first sentence, he could have ended it by saying "never seen a pipeline slide off of the tracks and kill dozens of people".

I would have avoided the "never seen" sentence, completely. I would have turned it into "how many people to trains and tankers run over/kill/injure in accidents? How much is spilled in loading/burned in shipping/leaked in transportation?"

Ya, we killed people in San Bruno and Bellingham, and did huge environmental damage in Michigan, but how does that compare to what CN (or CP, can't remember which) dumped into Lake Wabamun or Hells Gate, or the Columbia River, etc?

How much greenhouse emissions are generated by tanker trucks and trains, compared to pumping stations? How many cubes/mile/gallon do we move in pipelines compared to train or truck fuel economy?

A cut line looks beautiful and is useful to animals and can be used for recreation by people. Roads and traintracks, not so much. How much wildlife is killed by trains/trucks as opposed to those who graze on cutlines?

There are many things to say, that promote the positive, get the train/trucking advocates on the back foot, and give environmentalists positives to consider, rather than arguing from ignorance by saying "i've never seen...."

Further to another comment in this thread about positive media attention, the pipeline industry has NOT promoted any of the above, nor any safety systems/monitoring/leak detection programs, emergency response plans and drills, industry standards and certifications, etc. The industry is about as advanced as the airline industry, but people look up to pilots and not to pipeline controllers or plant engineers because the airline industry worked harder at PR.

Ya, I'm passionate about this. I work in the industry. I'm there keeping grandmas and babies warm in the middle of the night during freezing christmas holidays, and doing so in the safest, most effective, and most efficient manner possible with the technology available at this time. And I'm working to make my job, and my industry safer, more effective, and more efficient.

:bad_boys_20:

When you have to move oil, pipelines are safer than rail and ships are even safer than pipelines but the antis rail against the two safer modes of transport while you hear crickets from them about oil moving on trains. Many thanks to all of the people who work in the energy industry. Do you live in a bomb train blast zone? https://news.vice.com/article/do-you...ain-blast-zone

Location
 

Sadly, the location of said spill is critical.

The Kamloops Band of the Secwepemc Nation is one of the opposition parties.

One drop is one too many at this time.

I don't think it has to do with location, more with the operating company.

If it was any other company other than KM, this wouldn't be in the news.

Although, it's pretty convenient there's a "spill" on an opposition parties land right before the announcement.. Not saying, just saying..

Not entirely disagreeing with your premise however smart people, public with a brain, people that are sick of special interest groups screaming their religious anti oil fervour will clearly see that accidents happen and on the whole pipelines are the best way to enjoy everything oil gives us in society from power to transportation to cheaper goods and refined products.

Education is needed to highlight the fact that this is inconsequential. It is proof a system can work safely.

The alternative of horse and buggy makes no sense. The fact we in Canada are the only people in the WORLD who are imposing self inflicted financial pain on tax payers and consumers will soon resonate with average people.

The fact we continue to remove cheap coal electricity while China builds a thousand more...stings big time and the tide will swing back from emotionally driven lobbying from the fanatical 5 % to common sense of the 95 %!

No need to worry now. Truly dumb and Nutley have just bought out PART of the company. And we know anything run by the government will be run with the highest of standards and defiantly come in under budget. :sHa_sarcasticlol: