At 6:11 p.m. on the afternoon of Sept. 9 in San Bruno, all hell broke loose.
At that moment, a natural gas line burst in the Bay Area city, igniting a fireball that incinerated a neighborhood of 37 homes and killed eight people. It also prompted a firestorm of scrutiny for the state’s entire network of pipelines.
The California Public Utilities Commission investigated Pacific Gas & Electric, the operator of the pipeline, and mandated the company check all of its pipelines across the state.
Legislators were also quick to take action. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) presented the Pipeline Safety and Community Empowerment Act of 2010, which would place stricter regulations on gas pipelines and require emergency shutoff valves to be installed in high-risk areas. U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein introduced a Senate bill that went a step further, demanding such shutoff valves “wherever technically or economically feasible.”
While federal safety investigators are still searching for the cause of the blast, many have pointed to corrosion and the pipeline’s age as possible contributors. The pipeline in question dates back to 1956; but here on the Central Coast, which has a long history of oil and gas production, many pipelines are much older than that—and recently discovered oil spills have some residents and environmental groups demanding the aging lines be thoroughly tested.
Nipomo Creek spills cause concern
Northern Santa Barbara County is home to a spaghetti-like network of thousands of miles of oil and gas lines—and many are downright ancient. In fact, natural gas pipelines located in the oil fields of Casmalia, Cat Canyon, and Sisquoc date back 80 to 100 years or more, according to the county.
Union Oil installed the first oil pipelines in the area around the turn of the century. Formerly owned by Unocal, they’re now property of Conoco-Phillips, which purchased the lines in 1997.
Up to 84,000 barrels of oil per day are pumped from Conoco’s Summit Pump station to its Santa Maria Refinery along Line 300, which runs east to west alongside Nipomo Creek in Southern San Luis Obispo County. The stretch of pipeline dates back at least 50 to 60 years, according to Santa Barbara County’s Energy Division.
Though it’s difficult to know exactly how many spills have occurred along the line, leaks discovered over the past few years have recently prompted concern about the risk of corrosion and the potential for more leaks.
Most recently, Conoco-Phillips agreed to perform excavation and cleanup on a football field-sized oil spill underneath the Nipomo Creek near the historic Dana Adobe. According to the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, Conoco workers discovered the 300-foot diameter circular spill during a routine check in May 2003. The issue didn’t come to the attention of the Nipomo Community Services District until 2006.
Daniel Diaz and Ralph Bishop, a pair of Nipomo locals who call themselves the “Nipomo Creek Dogs,” an environmental watchdog group, said if it hadn’t been for a chance meeting with an unidentified Conoco employee, the public would have never known about the spill.
“We had to do quite a bit of work to get anyone’s attention on this,” Bishop said. “There’s nothing conceptual down here. This is absolute reality. The door has been opened and now the public knows.”
According to Rich Chandler, engineering geologist with the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, monitoring wells confirmed petroleum hydrocarbons released by the leak seeped beneath the bottom of the creek.
“Groundwater has been impacted by the release of crude oil,” Chandler said. “It’s beneath the surface and could potentially impact the creek.”
For now, he said, a layer of clay is keeping the contaminated groundwater from coming up into the creek itself; it doesn’t pose a risk to human health.
“If it’s crude oil, it’s less of a health risk than it is just an aesthetic concern, because typically you would smell and taste something like that at very low concentrations,” Chandler said. “It’s unlikely that anyone would drink enough of it to damage their health, given the fact that they would taste it or smell it pretty strongly.”
Chandler said while there are “numerous historic leaks” along the pipeline, he isn’t worried about any ongoing problems at the current time because the pipeline is tested on a regular basis.
As part of the agreement with the Water Board, Conoco-Phillips, which replaced the leaking section of pipeline in 2005, will need permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and state Department of Fish and Game to excavate the site and remove the contaminated soil. The work is expected to begin as soon as summer of 2011.
The Water Board will perform periodic on-site monitoring to observe the cleanup and test samples to confirm the contaminants have been removed.
The agreement doesn’t mean the story is over, said Bishop and Diaz, who claim they know of at least five historic spills that have occurred along the line.
“Logic would dictate that the erosion that is normal in any transfer pipe is going to continue,” Bishop said. “How many other leaks have gone on that we don’t know about?”
According to records on file with the San Luis Obispo County Health Agency, another historical leak was discovered in October 2009 along the same line, during a site assessment for the proposed Jim Miller Park, next to the Adobe Plaza in Nipomo. Engineering firm Terra Pacific Group investigated the site in June.
A subsurface investigation report to the county on soil samples taken at the site, dated Aug. 16, revealed the presence of petroleum hydrocarbons in the soil, attributed to an 8-inch pipeline taken out of service by Unocal in the early 1990s. The samples also showed “somewhat elevated” levels of lead and detectable levels of arsenic, blamed on the remnants of a historic railroad warehouse. In a follow-up work plan, Terra Pacific proposed the installation of seven groundwater wells to determine the extent of the impact of contaminants to the soil. The final analysis on the site could take months to complete.
The San Luis Obispo County Department of Environmental Health is the lead agency investigating the spill.
“We come across these [spills] pretty commonly throughout the whole county,” said Scott Milner, inspector for the Environmental Health Services Division of San Luis Obispo County’s Public Health Department. “In the older ones, the joints seep a little. For the most part they seem localized.”
Farther up the creek, to the north, lies visible evidence of another historic spill. Chunks of oil mixed with sand litter the dry creek bottom, and a pipeline with a repaired section hangs overhead.
The known spills are enough to make Andrew Christie, director of the Santa Lucia chapter of the Sierra Club, concerned about the possibility of a widespread problem with older oil transmission lines.
“Over a period of years, [Conoco] determined there was a very significant problem in the eroding of the creek down to the level of the contaminated soils, so they finally took action to fix that,” Christie said. “That raises the question, how many other lines of similar vintage are having the same problem?
“We commend the Water Board for taking action and moving to save Nipomo Creek before it’s too late,” he added. “We hope everyone else with the same potential situation on their hands will do likewise.”
And while you’re at it …
According to Christie, it’s impossible to know how far-reaching the corrosion problem could be among older lines until more extensive testing is done. He hopes the sudden publicity gas lines now have as a result of San Bruno will spill over to oil lines, which run side by side with gas lines and “aren’t getting any younger.”
“As long as everybody’s now awake to the fact that somebody should do something about the gas lines, let’s do something about the oil lines,” he said.
Christie believes PG&E and Conoco should combine forces to test all gas and oil lines in areas serviced by PG&E, especially those located next to creeks and water bodies with the potential to carry contaminated material out to sea.
Conoco-Phillips is required by law to keep and maintain repair records on their pipelines, however company officials didn’t respond to multiple requests from the Sun to examine them.
Repair records and inspection reports for oil and gas lines are kept by Santa Barbara County’s Energy Division, but are “hundreds of thousands of pages” long and are locked away in an archive building, according to county energy specialist Kevin Drude.
Drude is chair of the county’s System Safety Reliability Review Committee, which oversees pipeline testing by the oil companies. The committee meets monthly with
operators to analyze facility reports, including internal pipeline inspections.
Drude said he’s confident that through the committee’s work and yearly safety audits, Conoco-Phillips and other oil companies are being forthright with their safety checks.
“I think we have some really responsible corporate entities out there right now,” he added. “Granted, there can always be an accident, but in terms of negligence, I don’t see it.”
Among the measures taken by oil companies to mitigate corrosion, according to Drude, is a routine use of “pigs”—wire brushes that scrape particulate matter from the inside of the pipeline. The pigs push water through the line and keep petroleum compounds from clinging to the inside of the pipe’s metal walls.
About every five years, pipeline operators run “smartpigs” through the lines, which scan and electronically mark dents, scratches, and corrosion, showing exact locations of trouble spots. When pipelines register 80-percent wall loss, oil companies are required to shut down the operation, dig up the line, and repair it. At lower levels of loss, pipeline operators may increase the use of corrosion inhibitors, increase inspections, and lower pressure.
“I don’t know any operator that intends to leak, but sometimes they do, because they don’t know the operational maintenance history of that pipeline,” Drude said. “It could have cracks and bad wells in it and wasn’t built to such high standards as they are today.”
An oil-soaked legacy
Beneath the Santa Maria Valley lie remnants of more than a hundred years of gas and oil production. Union Oil began oil exploration in the area in 1888, and by 1957, there were 1,775 oil wells in the valley.
Today, the All American Pipeline, a distribution line that transports processed crude oil north under the Los Padres National Forest, is 30 inches in diameter. The “sweet” crude it carries is the least dangerous oil product. It will burn, but won’t explode.
To the west, up to 36,000 barrels of crude oil flow daily from the Lompoc Oil & Gas Plant to the Santa Maria Refinery in lines running north, directly under the city of Santa Maria. They date back to about 1986 when the Lompoc facility became operational.
According to city spokesman Mark van de Kamp, city officials have a high interest in the pipelines from a disaster preparedness standpoint.
“We’re concerned about the integrity of any pipeline that goes through the city,” van de Kamp said. “There is a legitimate concern out there about aging equipment and the ability of some of these smaller producers to have the cash flow to maintain the infrastructure.”
In recent years, oil companies have performed remediation work on historic oil sumps and purchased old homes to replace contaminated earth. According to the county’s Drude, residual contamination of groundwater is a constant concern.
“It’s always a risk,” Drude said. “If you have a big tract of land that has historical oil development, you’ll have hydrocarbons in the soil because no one thought much of it.”
According to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Pipeline Safety, crude oil made up 42 to 51 percent of all liquid spilled from pipelines nationwide from 1985 to 2000. Over that time, pipeline corrosion was the reported cause in an average of 39 percent of spills.
The same data indicated an average of 60 spills per year involving crude oil pipelines since 1985.
While age always brings corrosion issues, Drude said, even pipelines younger than 20 years old can show significant wear, due to the environment or lax integrity checks.
“It really is a matter of maintenance,” Drude said. “You have metal in the ground, and you definitely have the rust potential, both externally and internally, and if you don’t do it right, you’re really going to damage your pipe.”
Know what’s below
Due to natural erosion, Drude said, oil and gas pipelines originally buried deep underground are now located near the surface. This leads to the most common cause of leaks being “third party damage,” generally from homeowners or farmers hitting pipes with earth-moving equipment.
The Southern California Gas Company, which operates about 4,000 miles of natural gas transmission lines in its Santa Maria-area service territory, shares the concern.
According to company spokesman Raul Gordillo, in 2009 the company reported that 2,600 customers inadvertently hit lines while digging. After San Bruno, the company took steps to make it easier for residents to find out where transmission lines are located, replicating information from the federal National Pipeline Mapping System on its website.
The maps aren’t fully detailed, due to “security concerns,” but can be used as a general resource for homeowners or contractors planning a below-ground project. Gordillo said Southern California Gas would also be sending letters to customers located within one-eighth of a mile of pipelines to make them aware of the locations of lines.
“These are preventable accidents,” Gordillo said. “We just need to get the message across to let our customers know the importance of calling before you dig.”
A majority of the gas company’s pipelines in the county were installed in the 1950s and ’60s, Gordillo said. However, knowing how old a pipeline is doesn’t tell the whole story.
“Age is not by itself a good indicator of the fitness of a pipeline,” he said. “Other factors include how the pipeline is operated, its operating history, construction practices, and the environment around a pipeline. In reality, it’s how you maintain it.”
Through the company’s pipeline integrity program, lines in highly populated areas are assessed on a quarterly basis and leak surveys are performed at least twice a year. As a result of the San Bruno incident, Southern California Gas will be accelerating leak survey schedules on transmission lines in populated areas that haven’t been surveyed in the past six months, including in Santa Maria. The surveys will be completed by the end of October.
Of all the pipelines in the county, the PXP gas lines running from Platform Irene to the Lompoc Oil and Gas Plant are the most dangerous, according to the county. Buried five feet below the surface and running near Vandenberg Village, the lines carry
poisonous “raw” gas with enough hydrogen sulfide to kill a person in
the event of a leak.
The lines are well monitored and “in good shape,” according to Drude, who said it’s too early to tell whether the San Bruno explosion will impact the way gas pipelines are regulated.
“No regulation in the world is going to stop stupidity,” Drude said. “But if there was an operational flaw or design flaw, then that could trigger something new. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas can be contacted at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 7-14, 2010.