[All] Update: Line 9 and Possible Humber River Leak

[Louisette Lanteigne]

Hi folks
I contacted the National Energy Board today to file a formal report of the spill that I witnessed at the Humber River. It's under their jurisdictional power to investigate. Professional Engineers Ontario who  enforce the Planning Act have no jurisdictional powers over oil and gas issues and the MOE can investigate chemical releases and pollution issues but it's not their jurisdiction to investigate pipeline integrity issues. Although I have provided info to the MOE investigations, this was the first report I made directly to the NEB about this issue. 

I provided them with the videos and the information I shared with the MOE as well as data from an unnamed Engineer who I have been working with and he outlined concerns specific to Line 9 and mentioned a point of weakness in the pipe's thickness located by the West Humber River that was identified in the Line 9 detailed mapping as provided by Enbridge during the NEB process. The Engineer states "Often the 0.5 wall sections that should be under the river/ creek etc. are shifted by 300 to 500 m.  At one point the kilometer posts are reversed."


Below I provide his comments regarding the Line 9 pipeline's route/thickness. 


Lulu 

_____________________________________________________________________

Approximate kilometer points (kp) are given in square brackets. 

Pages are given as indicated in the upper right corner of the map. E.g. page 20 is “Page 20 of 175”, but shows as page 21 in the document, due to the front page.

Pumping station locations:
North Westover [2997.5], map p. 1
Hilton [3214.5], map p. 60
Cardinal [3430.3], map. p. 159
Terrebonne [3617.4], map p. 170
Montreal [3637], map. p. 174 or 175
Pipeline at each pumping station shows stronger pipe going east, weaker pipe going west, clearly designed for west → east flow (pressure is highest at the pumping station, dropping towards the next pumping station, with local variations due to elevation. Specifically:
Looking at Hilton station, the pipeline to the east is 0.312” wall, but to the west it is mainly 0.25” with few 0.281” sections. Clearly, the east side is accommodated for high pressure leaving the station, the west side is not.
At Cardinal station, the east side is consistently 0.281” wall, west side is 0.25” wall. Same as above, with the remark that 0.281” is less increase than 0.312”, by 11%.
At Terrebonne station, same as Cardinal, east side is 0.281”, west side is 0.25”.
Since the pipeline was originally designated for west-east transport, this is appropriate. However, during the period of “reverse” flow direction, obviously the pipe size was wrong right after the pumping stations. Perhaps this is why it never operated near the maximum allowed pressure, and why NEB commented that lowering the pressure is not proper remedy for pipeline deficiencies. The fact that NEB allowed such a reversal in 1999 is probably based on the pressure tests.
The features on the map have large discrepancies with the official section designations, copied from the 1997 pressure test data. The discrepancies for the 0.5” sections alone between the actual waterway position and the documented thick pipe section are often 0.3 to 0.5 km, but many are bang on, which indicates that this is not simply a case of constant shift. Some examples are given below. Shift is given in km.
[3108.03003108.102] +0.2
[3109.06903109.130] +0.3
[3115.780-3115.817] +0.4
[3117.130-3117.169] +0.4
[3128.211-3128.333] +0.4
[3136.084-3136.122] +0.3
[3137.307-3137.345] +0.4
etc.
Generally, the pipe under the wetlands is 0.312” thick, while under waterways is sometimes 0.344” and sometimes 0.5”.
Waterways where the pipe is less than 0.344” thick (not counting where the thicker section is shifted due to inaccuracies – as listed above):
[2998.0] 0.312”
[3001.95] 0.312”
[3018.05] 0.281”
[3032.6] 0.312”
[3046.1] 0.312”
[3064.8] 0.312” (West Humber River)
[3070.6] 0.281” (Black Creek)
[3087.8] 0.281” (West Highland Creek)
[3098.2] 0.281” (Little Rouge Creek)
[3112.4] 0.281”
[3114.1] 0.281”
[3117.8] 0.281”
[3122-3127] five waterway crossings with 0.25” pipe
[3129-3136] seven waterway crossings with 0.281” or 0.25” pipe
[3138-3154] nine waterways crossings with 0.281” or 0.25” pipe
[3163.5] 0.281” (Graham Creek)
[3214.0] 0.25”
[3302.0] 0.281” (Spring Creek)
[3340-3355] sixteen waterways crossings with 0.25” pipe
Many more.
On page 18, the kilometre points 3059 and 3058 are swapped around!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20140811/5fcf6779/attachment.html>