WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2016 - Recommendations to help reduce
the risk of natural gas leak incidents are featured in a new report
by the Interagency Task Force on Natural Gas Storage Safety.
The task force was established in the wake of last year’s
massive natural
gas leak at California’s Aliso Canyon site, located in the Santa
Susana Mountains near Porter Ranch, Los Angeles.
Gases escaping from a well within Aliso
Canyon’s underground storage facility effectively
doubled the methane emission rate of the entire Los Angeles Basin at its peak.
In total, 97,100 metric tons of methane were released to the atmosphere, says
the task force of researchers
who published their findings in the journal Science.
The leak, which was discovered by
SoCalGas employees on Oct. 23, 2015, was permanently plugged on Feb. 18, 2016, nearly
four months later. It was the largest ever
gas leak from a U.S. storage facility, the researchers say.
The task force, co-chaired by Franklin Orr, the U.S.
Department of Energy’s under secretary for science and energy, and
Marie-Therese Dominguez, administrator of the Department of Transportation’s
Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), looked at three
primary areas: well integrity, health and environment, and energy reliability.
Among other findings, the task force recommends that, “except
under limited circumstances,” facility operators phase out single-point-of-failure
designs that contributed to the inability to swiftly control and repair the
Aliso Canyon leak.
Natural gas storage facility operators should also conduct
risk assessments, develop and implement transition plans to address high-risk
infrastructure and apply “robust” procedures to maintain safety and reliability
while the transition to modern well design standards is occurring, the report
finds.
The report’s recommendations are summarized in a fact sheet
available here.
To read the full report, click
here.
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