Oops #3 - Another Pipeline Break At Prudhoe - BP Reports Natural Gas Leak

[hatrack]

LONDON - British oil giant BP PLC said Monday that a second pipeline ruptured at its Alaskan facility, a month after the company reported its largest-ever spill at an oilfield on Alaska’s Northern Slope.

The break occurred on a three-inch wide natural gas line on April 6 near a production building at the Prudhoe Bay oilfield, BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said Monday.

The break resulted in an estimated leak of 12,000 cubic feet of natural gas, well below regulatory standards for reporting, Beaudo said.

“Someone apparently heard the rupture, so it was a fairly quick response,” he said, adding that external corrosion was the likely cause of the leak. The rupture follows a massive spill at the facility last month in a pipeline between two gathering centers. As much as 270,000 gallons (1.02 million liters) of crude spilled into the oilfield over an estimated period of five days.

EDIT

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12356453/

[Dead_Parrot]

1. You hit the trifecta! nt

[NNadir]

2. I wonder to what extent these leaks result from permafrost changes?

[Canuckistanian]

3. Good point

A lot of these pipelines are supported by frames on top of permafrost. What happens when the frames start sinking?

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Well, they blame corrosion

rather than subsidence, and even though they're an oil company I've no real reason to doubt them.

In this particular case, that is - The oil spill may be different...

[Dogmudgeon]

5. This Summer will probably tell the tale

It looks as though the Arctic is going to be experiencing its warmest summer in quite a long time, after an epochally warm winter. Given a lot of permafrost melt, thermokarsting, and abrupt land level shifts, we could be getting reports of gas and petroleum leaks every few days. After all, the pipes and their supports are over 30 years old, and were put in place during a stably cold era.

I also wonder how the North Sea hardware will stand up to the changes from the thermohaline changes. I would expect there to be somewhat more buoyancy-related problems, but my guess comes from a layman's poor understanding of marine engineering.

There has also been talk of developing possible large or major oil fields in the Arctic and/or the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, especially around the Falklands/Malvinas. With large numbers of calved icebergs, this could be quite a tricky undertaking. Is it possible that someday we might "accidentally" dump the contents of a major oil field, the size of Ghawar or Cantarell, into the Southern Ocean?

--p!

[phantom power]

6. I know that permafrost thawing is *predicted* to cause pipeline breaks.

It sounds like the recent problems were not due to permafrost failure, but the future is a different story.