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Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

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Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby vox_mundi » Fri 16 Sep 2016, 14:49:11

Leak From Biggest U.S. Gasoline Pipe Sparks ‘Red Alert’

Image

Gasoline prices are set to jump across the eastern U.S. after a spill from the country’s largest fuel pipeline choked off supplies.

A 250,000 gallons leak near Birmingham, Alabama Sept. 9 shut the main gasoline pipeline delivering fuel from refineries along the Gulf Coast to 50 million Americans in states from Mississippi to New Jersey. Colonial Pipeline Co. said on Thursday it pushed back the estimate for a complete startup of its Line 1 to next week from this weekend, citing adverse weather conditions overnight that slowed the cleanup and repair.

Suppliers are moving gasoline and diesel by sea and sending trucks to distant terminals to bring fuel to consumers, but it won’t come close to the 1.3 million barrels a day that the shuttered line normally carries.

"The thing is that there is a time pressure. No one is exactly sure when the pipeline will be completely fixed," Patricia Hemsworth, senior vice president at Paragon Global Markets in New York, said by message.

Colonial said that supply disruptions would be felt first in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Tom Kloza, an energy analyst with the Oil Price Information Service, said some stations in the Southeast could run short on supply and boost their prices by 20 or 30 cents a gallon.
The Colonial pipeline is the metaphorical aorta for the supply the most populated regions of the country, and you've lost 10 days of blood flow

If prices rise, the effect could be felt the hardest in Tennessee, which is supplied by a spur off the leaky pipeline.

Trade groups for service stations and convenience stores in Tennessee assured consumers that the pumps won't run dry. They said fuel wholesalers were hauling gasoline in from fuel terminals and refineries that don't depend on the downed pipeline.

Near Birmingham, work crews were trying Friday to repair the pipeline. Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline said most of the spilled gasoline has been corralled in a retention pond, and it downplayed any threat to public safety. It's not clear when the leak started. It was detected Sept. 9.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby GHung » Fri 16 Sep 2016, 15:42:26

I noticed a local Atlanta news report last night said the "leak" was over 250,000 barrels. Anyway, the Governor of Georgia begged the EPA to allow use of winter blend fuel which was already being stockpiled for the change-over:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/colonial-pi ... 1473978662

.....The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday waived Clean Air Act requirements for 13 counties in Georgia and five counties in Tennessee “to minimize or prevent disruption of an adequate supply of fuel to consumers.” The waiver lasts through midnight tonight.

Colonial is still transporting gasoline from Houston to western Alabama. And the company has started shipping gasoline on its Line 2, which normally carries jet fuel, diesel and home heating oil, to help mitigate the supply impact.


My step son called last night and said there were lines forming at gas stations in his area north of Atlanta. Some stations were running out.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby StarvingLion » Fri 16 Sep 2016, 17:11:24

Some stations were running out.


Hahahaha...the place will burn down in matter of days.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby vox_mundi » Fri 16 Sep 2016, 20:04:03

State of emergency declared to keep gas flowing: Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal each issued executive orders Thursday to declare states of emergency over concerns about gasoline shortages in areas served by the pipeline.

The orders will allow fuel delivery truck drivers in each state to exceed maximum hours limits established by the U.S. Department of Transportation and prevent gasoline outages. The orders apply only to trucks that are transporting fuel.

Bentley concluded his order by reminding all Alabama residents "it is unlawful for any person within the State of Alabama to impose unconscionable prices for the sale of any commodity during the period of a declared State of Emergency."

Crews are working around the clock to clean it up: Colonial Pipeline spokesman Bill Berry said that a total of 519 Colonial employees and outside contractors are working in shifts to remove the gasoline and remove the spilled material from rural Shelby County southeast of Helena.


There is still gas in the pipeline, possibly still leaking: The leaking pipeline was shut down on Friday after the leak was discovered, but Berry said there may be additional gas still inside the pipeline. The leaking section of pipeline hasn't been excavated yet due to safety precautions, so Berry said the condition of the pipeline and cause of the leak is still unknown.

Crews have installed temporary plugs in the pipeline on either side of the spill location, and gasoline is being extracted from the affected section of pipeline at those blockage sites.


The company says the leak is contained in a mining retention pond: The leak was discovered at an inactive mine site by employees of the Alabama Surface Mining Commission on Sept. 9, and Colonial says most of the gasoline is confined to a retention pond built for the mine.

Colonial is working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Cahaba Riverkeeper David Butler to monitor the nearby creeks and streams to make sure none of the gasoline reaches the river. If the weather holds, the gasoline will not reach the river.

Vapors create a safety concern for clean-up workers: Because so much gasoline is confined to a small area, crews have to take precautions to protect themselves from vapors that could be harmful if inhaled or potentially flammable or explosive if they reach certain concentrations.

Federal authorities restricted the airspace over the spill.


Image

Three Clarksville gas stations were low on fuel today. A Mapco on Madison Street was out of gas this morning, and this evening, a Mapco at Warfield and Ted Crozier had only premium gas. A Shell on Rossview Road also had no gas available as of 5 p.m.

Kay Hill, who was buying gas today in Clarksville, said she had seen prices climb within a short window of time on Friday, jumping from $1.99 a gallon to $2.19. (Quityurbitchin, I pay $2.23)

"They are saying the shortage is because of the leakage," she said. "It takes away from my groceries that I could buy to get gas. I'm getting gas now because I know in another two hours the price is going to go up again."

Image
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sat 17 Sep 2016, 10:15:12

Image
Aerial photo of two of the three mine water retention ponds at the site of a pipeline leak that spilled an estimated 250,000 gallons of gasoline in Shelby County, Ala. The retention pond on the right is where the gasoline has been contained.

... A mining inspector first alerted Colonial to the leak from the 1960s-era pipeline on Sept. 9 after smelling a gasoline odor on a mining property, the company has said.

Colonial previously estimated about 6,000 barrels of gasoline had spilled but said Friday that it could be as much as 8,000 barrels. That would put the spill between 252,000 and 336,000 gallons of gasoline.

... Gasoline from the pipeline was discovered in a nearby mine retention pond, and three dead raccoons and a dead rabbit were found nearby. Later, the company found that gasoline had flowed from that pond to another nearby pond through a culvert, according to federal pipeline regulators.

As of Thursday morning, Colonial said it had recovered more than 1,300 barrels of gasoline from one of the ponds and hadn’t yet estimated how much gasoline reached the second pond, according to federal regulators.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-reg ... 1474072198


"Based on current projections and consultations with industry partners, parts of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina will be the first markets to be impacted by any potential disruption in supply."

In addition, some suppliers have begun shipping refined gasoline by water to New York from Houston while the pipeline is shut down.


The longer the outage continues, the greater the effect in Atlanta, said Gregg Laskoski, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy, which specializes in fuel information.

Colonial is one of two companies operating large pipelines from Gulf refineries, and the other company has not reported a problem, Laskoski said. “But the Colonial pipeline is the primary supplier to the metro Atlanta area,” he said.

Nothing propels prices like a shortage – or rumors of one. After Hurricane Katrina’s hammering of the Gulf Coast, pipelines stopped functioning and gasoline prices soared.


#GasPrices may rise 5-15c in GA, NC, TN, VA and 10-20c in SC over the next week due to supply/pipeline outage. Some stations may run out.
4:15 PM - 15 Sep 2016

Lines of customers could start to grow in the tightest markets, according to DeHaan.

"I think that’s probably inevitable," DeHaan said. "Word is starting to get out that there’s a pipeline outage. People freak out any time you talk about possible outages or disruptions."
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Sat 17 Sep 2016, 12:53:36

Ghung - "My step son called last night and said there were lines forming at gas stations in his area north of Atlanta. Some stations were running out." Perhaps we'll see an hoarding induced shortage as witnessed back in the great "oil embargo" of the 70's. Many tens of millions of bbls of gasoline "disappeared" from stations over night. Simple explanation: instead of waiting until their gauges got close to "E" (as they normally would) they started filling up at the half tank level...or sooner. The gasoline didn't disappear: it was transfered from a relative few large storage tanks to tens of millions of very small storage tanks.

Same thing happened in Houston during a hurricane a few years ago: after it passed saw stations with 100+ cars in line at 0600 hrs. Since I topped off before the storm hit (grew up in S LA so knew what to do) I just commuted as usual. By the time I needed to fuel up most of the stations had full tanks and very few customers.

A simple solution IMHO: don't let anyone buy fuel if the have half a tankfull or more.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby GoghGoner » Sat 17 Sep 2016, 15:18:15

I topped off with a half tank because I expected prices to go up. Prices went from 1.88 to 2.25 while I was at work. If you can save a few dollars here and there, it adds up :)
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sat 17 Sep 2016, 17:23:24

Six states -- Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and North Carolina -- are facing possible gas shortages after a pipeline spill, officials said.

The states have all declared states of emergency, citing concerns about "fuel supply disruptions" and "disruptions of gasoline" in the wake of the Colonial Pipeline spill.

The governor of North Carolina declared the state of emergency to "help ensure that there will be adequate supplies of fuel across the state and prevent excessive fuel pricing."

Prices on futures contracts for wholesale gasoline rose about 2 percent Friday to $1.46 a gallon after rising 5 percent on Thursday.

Long lines have quickly amassed at gas stations in the six states, and social media users took to their accounts to document the chaos and dwindling gasoline supply, in some cases. Below, images from Tennessee.

Image
http://abcnews.go.com/US/states-facing- ... d=42153670
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby dolanbaker » Sat 17 Sep 2016, 17:59:00

Perhaps we'll see an hoarding induced shortage as witnessed back in the great "oil embargo" of the 70's. Many tens of millions of bbls of gasoline "disappeared" from stations over night. Simple explanation: instead of waiting until their gauges got close to "E" (as they normally would) they started filling up at the half tank level...or sooner. The gasoline didn't disappear: it was transfered from a relative few large storage tanks to tens of millions of very small storage tanks.

Got it in one, in the meantime, a few will make a good living on the fear of the flock!
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby GHung » Sat 17 Sep 2016, 18:08:55

North Georgia and Southwestern North Carolina are pretty much out of fuel now; at least gasoline. Here in the southern Appalachians, most of our fuel comes up from the Atlanta metro, and we're at the end of that supply chain. I'm wondering how many weekend warriors (lots of second/vacation homes here) will get stranded because they didn't top off. I'm betting every pump between here and Atlanta is sucked dry (see Rock's 'hoarding' comment).

Anyway, I haven't seen any price gouging. Hard to do when you don't have product to sell, eh? The stations around here all have their electronic price signs set to 00.00. Kind of spooky.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby dolanbaker » Sat 17 Sep 2016, 18:47:28

GHung wrote:
Anyway, I haven't seen any price gouging. Hard to do when you don't have product to sell, eh? The stations around here all have their electronic price signs set to 00.00. Kind of spooky.

I bet that if you look around, someone has a few jerry cans of fuel and is selling it at a good markup!
I remember being in Yugoslavia (Serbia) in the early 1990s during the embargo and all the petrol stations were closed, but on almost every street corner people had old plastic bottles of all sizes filled with petrol.
They were selling for about 5DM a litre ,about 10x the price before the embargo.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sat 17 Sep 2016, 19:57:06

Prices in metro Nashville were up 14 cents to $2.25 per gallon with some stations reporting outages and long waits. A gallon of gas in metro Atlanta is up 14 cents to $2.36 per gallon.


South Carolina:... The Norm’s location on Spartanburg Highway ran out of gas around 2:30 p.m. Saturday; lines started at the station before 8 a.m. Norm's has three locations, all within Henderson County.

“There was no gas in Etowah so I had to come here,” said Kenneth Frece of Etowah as he filled his Ford Expedition at the Norm’s on Dana Road near Four Seasons.

Pat Roysdon of Flat Rock said she waited 15 minutes to get gas at the same station. “I was just getting gas on the way to work,” she said. “I had no idea what was going on.”

“I’m old enough to remember the '70s,” Roysdon added. “Luckily I don’t have to go far.”

Cars lining up to refuel occasionally blocked roadways, as was the case at the Speedway on Spartanburg Highway, where supplies were almost gone at 4 p.m. Motorists began arriving to fill up 15 minutes before the station opened at 6 a.m., according to an associate at the station.

There was still “some gas” at Triangle Stop stations in Henderson County in the late afternoon, though supplies at their Asheville airport and Saluda locations had already been exhausted, according to Beau Waddell, vice president of Triangle Stop.

The Enmarket on Asheville Highway ran out of gasoline in the early afternoon; the Ingles stations in Mills River and on Howard Gap Road ran out of gas by mid-afternoon.

http://www.blueridgenow.com/news/201609 ... es-at-pump


Governor McCrory's office declared a state of emergency in North Carolina due to the gas shortage expected from a major pipeline burst in Alabama.

Locally, by Saturday afternoon stations in some counties began restricting purchases to only 10 gallons, and some stations are completely out of gas for the time being.


... Lines of drivers could be seen bumper-to-bumper winding around several gas station parking lots throughout Asheville,NC. Some lines extended onto streets such as Merrimon Avenue or Amboy Road and blocked traffic.

A handful of service stations capped how much gas people could put in their cars, limiting motorists to 10 gallons or $20 worth of fuel. Several service stations were forced to put red plastic bags over their pumps because they ran out of gas.

A representative from Ingles confirmed that several of their stations had run out of gas Saturday morning.


Knoxville, TN gas station runs out of all fuel except diesel

The new Weigel's in Bearden ran out of gas around 6 p.m. on Friday following news that a major gas pipeline in Alabama started leaking. Only diesel fuel was available at the station.

This was not the news Lisa Mills was hoping to learn by accident, after searching two gas stations on a Friday night.

She said, "You need gas everyday to live, you can get around without it...I went to Weigel's to go get gas and every single gas pump was covered up with a plastic bag, indicating that they didn't have gas...I would have never thought we would have had a state of emergency on gas."

Miles pondered a worst case scenario, "If everyone freaks out and goes and gets it than it's going to be even worse."

http://www.local8now.com/content/news/K ... 92511.html


Gas Supply Runs Low Amid Panic In Middle Tennessee

Nashville experienced the same panic in September 2008 after Hurricane Ike hit Texas. But it was much worse.

Jackie Dawson, 69, of Mt. Juliet, Tenn., gasped when she saw five cars deep at the pumps at her local Kroger. "I was just amazed at how everybody went into panic mode when they shouldn’t have," she said.

"One woman put gasoline in three huge gas tanks as well as her car. It was bizarre. Just like in 2008. Just like the '70s."

In 2008, Dawson remembers sitting in lines that were 12 deep. "And they'd turn away 10 because they ran out of gas."
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby GHung » Sun 18 Sep 2016, 23:14:58

Price limits invoked in NC; not in GA. Local Atlanta news reporting some stations charging $4.00 to $5.00 per gallon.

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta ... /447103866
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby vox_mundi » Tue 01 Nov 2016, 06:56:02

Colonial Pipeline: 1 dead, 5 injured in Shelby County pipeline explosion

Colonial Pipeline Co shut down its main gasoline and distillates pipelines on Monday after another explosion and fire in Shelby, Alabama, killing a worker and sending five to the hospital - the second time in two months it had to close the crucial supply line to the U.S. East Coast.

A nine-man crew was conducting work on the Colonial pipeline system at the time of the explosion, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley told a briefing. Seven of the crew members were injured, with two evacuated by air.

The explosion occurred when a contract crew hit the gasoline pipeline (Line 1) with a trackhoe, igniting gasoline, Colonial said an e-mailed statement late on Monday.

One worker died at the scene and five individuals were taken to Birmingham-area hospitals for treatment, the company said.

Four were taken to the UAB hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, hospital spokesman Adam Pope said.

A segment of pipeline was undergoing maintenance on Monday afternoon when it exploded. The fire had been contained as of around 9 p.m. (0100 GMT on Tuesday), according to local media reports.

Crews built a 8-foot (2-meter) tall dirt dam to contain burning fuel, Bentley said on Twitter late on Monday.

The explosion sparked wildfires, burning 32 acres, the governor said.

Colonial said company personnel and emergency crews were responding to the incident. The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, said it had personnel on the way to the site.

Bentley's office said on Twitter the site was about a mile west of a massive leak last month that closed the gasoline pipeline for over 12 days. A 3-mile (4.8-km) area around the site had been evacuated, the governor said.

A temporary flight restriction is in effect in the area around the pipeline explosion, the Alabama Emergency Management Agency said on Twitter.

Colonial, the biggest refined products system in the United States, is responsible for supplying about one-third of the 3.2 million barrels per day of gasoline consumed on the East Coast, according to U.S. Energy Department data.

Colonial was working to restart a section of pipeline damaged after its biggest leak of gasoline in nearly two decades on Sept. 9, which released as much as 8,000 barrels (336,000 gallons) of gasoline in Shelby County. The restart was planned for mid-November after removal of a bypass line installed after the September leak.

The pipeline closure drove up gasoline prices at the pump in the U.S. Southeast and on futures markets.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby Revi » Tue 01 Nov 2016, 08:01:22

Great...
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby GHung » Tue 01 Nov 2016, 10:34:54

Here we go again. I did my monthly fill-up yesterday before the news broke. My wife called on her way to work and said the prices locally have already gone up about ten cents. Not sure if it's related 8)
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Tue 01 Nov 2016, 10:50:22

Absolutely no excuse for such an accident. Just a guess but the contractor may have went cheap and didn't hire a pipeline locator to flag it TO THE INCH. Yes: the are companies that do this with very sophisticated equipment. But it still isn't very expensive...a few $thousand per survey. Between repairs, fines, wrongful death lawsuits, etc. saving less than $10k will cost many $millions.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby GHung » Tue 01 Nov 2016, 11:01:34

Right on Rock. I was part of a team that surveyed that very pipeline in the mid 90s when these companies were going digital from paper maps. Our company was one of the largest "call before you dig" outfits in the southeast, and was on retainer to these folks. We could have a crew there in a few hour from Atlanta. That said, we dealt with contractors that were clueless assholes who didn't seem to care. We often got to a site and found them already digging. The crazy thing is that, if they dug exactly where we told them to and an accident occurred, the liability was on us.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Tue 01 Nov 2016, 12:29:33

ROCKMAN wrote:Absolutely no excuse for such an accident. Just a guess but the contractor may have went cheap and didn't hire a pipeline locator to flag it TO THE INCH.

This whole thing seems kind of bizarre to me.

In '12, I had a bunch of work done on my house for improvements and problems. So multiple trenches had to be dug.

In each case, the water, electric, and gas companies came out and indicated where the lines were. It wasn't to the inch, but it was quite close. The closer my description for where we were going to dig, the more accurate and complete were the markings.

And there were no exceptions. When I called after the first time, stated we were digging in the same area, and already knew where the lines were from the previous time -- it didn't matter. Even when I stated I was 100% confident no one had, for example, added gas or water lines while I wasn't paying attention, the rules were ironclad -- in each case of any digging -- all the utilities had to mark their lines -- no exceptions, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

...

So, if they're going to be like this for a regular home-owner (I didn't care to defy them and potentially pay huge fines, even when I knew I'd learn ZERO from the marking that would be done), one would think that in any rational system, the fines/penalties SHOULD be EPIC for people involved in the oil/gas industry, working near known MAJOR pipelines.

Maybe some of these companies should start getting sued out of existence, or sued to the tune of the VW cheating fine, and then such companies would stop doing massive stupid sh*t like this.

Just one law abiding taxpaying consumer's opinion.
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Re: Alert: Colonial Gasoline Pipeline Shutdown

Unread postby GHung » Tue 01 Nov 2016, 12:39:32

Then, again, it could be something as simple as a crappy or distracted equipment operator who zigged when he/she should have zagged, or even a busted hydraulic hose.
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