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BP fined over late installation of new leak detection at Prudhoe Bay There are 13 crude oil transmission pipeline systems in the state and nine are equipped to meet 1 percent standard Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation is fining BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. $300,000 because the company was not able to get a new leak detection system installed last year for Prudhoe Bay oil sales pipelines.
DEC said June 4 that if BP meets leak detection requirements by December, half of the fine will be suspended.
“Installation and testing of leak detection systems for BP’s Prudhoe Bay crude oil transmission pipelines were seriously behind schedule to meet the 1 percent leak detection standard,” DEC Commissioner Michele Brown said in a statement.
BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. spokesman Ronnie Chappell told PNA June 4 that BP is “pleased to have reached an agreement with the state and we are working to install a leak detection system at Prudhoe Bay that will satisfy the state and working to get that done before year end.”
Leak detection systems in place “The pipeline segments at issue already have leak detection systems in place,” Chappell said. “Those systems have been in place for years.
“They include low pressure alarms and flow measurement alarms, and those lines are also subject to periodic surveillance from ground and air,” he said.
BP is “in the process of upgrading those systems to meet the state standard of a leak of 1 percent,” he said.
DEC said state regulations adopted in 1997 and implemented with subsequent contingency plan approvals require that crude oil transmission pipelines be equipped with a leak detection system that can promptly detect a daily leak of at least 1 percent of the pipeline’s daily throughput, if technically feasible.
The pipeline owner must be able to verify how much oil is flowing through the line every 24 hours, DEC said, and remote pipelines must be checked weekly from the air.
The 1 percent requirement does not apply to gathering and processing lines. Disagreement over interpretation DEC said BP disputed the state’s interpretation of the leak detection standard, claiming that the Prudhoe Bay facility had to detect 1 percent of the total for all the transmission pipelines, not 1 percent of each line. As part of the settlement, DEC said, BP accepted the state’s interpretation which, the agency said, provides a higher degree of protection. BP’s Chappell said agreement on that issue was reached in December 2000.
“Installation of the new systems at Prudhoe Bay was slowed by disagreement between industry and the state on what the regulations require and how they should be applied,” he said, but common ground was reached on a major issue in December 2000, the “requirement to install new leak detection systems on all pipeline segments within Prudhoe that are part of the system that delivers sales quality oil to Taps.
“Industry had argued,” he said, “that all of the segments should be treated as a single line.”
Chappell said the Prudhoe Bay sales oil pipelines are segments of a system. The “threshold for detection is lower on individual segments than for the entire system,” he said, and the leak volume to be detected is smaller on individual segments than for the overall system when each segment is treated, as the state requires, as a single pipeline. Industry agreed with state in 2000 Chappell said that although industry’s position was that all of the lines were interrelated enough to be treated as a single system, it agreed to the state’s interpretation in December 2000. The plan, he said, was to have leak detection installed on all segments at Prudhoe Bay by yearend 2001, but when sediments were discovered in some of the lines, system modification and pigging was required, delaying implementation of the system.
The sediments, he said, interfere with the operation of the flow meters critical to the operation of the new system.
“When we realized the work could not be completed by Dec. 31, 2001,” Chappell said, BP approached the state to request the compliance order by consent referred to in the DEC release. Nine pipelines have systems There are 13 crude oil transmission pipeline systems in the state and nine are equipped with leak detection systems to meet the 1 percent standard, Jeff Mach, DEC’s oil and gas coordinator, said in the DEC statement.
The pipelines with leak detection systems installed are the trans-Alaska pipeline system; oil pipelines at Kuparuk, Endicott, Lisburne, Northstar, Alpine, Milne Point and West McArthur River; and the Cook Inlet pipeline.
“The remaining four pipelines are being equipped with leak detection this year,” he said. Those include Badami, Prudhoe Bay, Swanson River and Middle Ground Shoals.
“Tests conducted on seven of the pipelines have demonstrated that their leak detection systems can meet the 1 percent standard. Tests are ongoing,” Mach said.
Badami, Prudhoe Bay, West McArthur River and the Cook Inlet pipeline remain to be tested.
Leak detection systems are being installed as a condition of facility contingency plans at Swanson River and Middle Ground Shoals with tests scheduled for this fall. Badami a work in progress The Badami oil pipeline was tested in August and November of 2000 and the tests detected spills at 3.5 percent and 8 percent of the daily flow, DEC said.
BP has installed an additional meter at the junction of the Badami and Endicott pipelines.
“Achieving timely detection of a spill of 1 percent of the pipeline’s daily throughput may be difficult because of the pipeline’s low flow (about 2,500 barrels/day), particularly in comparison to its design capacity of 100,000 barrels/day,” DEC said. BP is installing two meters on the Badami line, one at the Endicott-Badami junction and one that detects lower flows more easily. DEC said the meters are scheduled to be completed and ready for testing by fall.
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