Delco moves closer to starting pipline hazard study
MEDIA » Delaware County Council moved a step forward in hiring a firm to do a risk analysis of two pipelines planned for Delaware County.
After weeks of delays, council reached a consensus Wednesday and voted 3-0 to move forward with a request for proposal for an expert to conduct a pipeline hazard analysis on the Mariner East 2 and Adelphia lines.
The Mariner East projects intend to move 700,000 barrels of propane, butane and ethane from the Marcellus and Utica shales to the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex for storage and distribution domestically and throughout the world.
The Adelphia Gateway project is converting an existing 50 miles of pipeline from oil to natural gas. The 84-mile line originally moved oil from Marcus Hook to Martins Creek. In 1996, the Interstate Energy Company converted the northern 34 miles of the line for natural gas delivery. As part of the project, an above-ground gas valve facility will be built in Concord.
On Wednesday, councilmen Michael Culp, Kevin Madden and Brian Zidek voted to revise the scope of the analysis proposal to focus on Mariner East 2 and Adelphia only, as opposed to the initial bid that would have looked at all the pipelines in the county. Council Vice Chairman Colleen Morrone was absent and council Chairman John McBlain abstained as his law firm, Swartz Campbell, has done work for Sunoco although he himself has not. McBlain said an inquiry has been placed into the state Ethics Commission for their official position.
“We’re talking about a pipeline, in the case of Mariner East 2, that’s somewhere between 95 and 98 percent of the way complete already,” Madden said. “I think it is crucially important as we said over and over again that this be an expedited process.”
Since the beginning of the year, council has been working out the details of hiring a consultant to perform a risk assessment.
After putting out a request, it received one expert who met the specifications of that – Quest Consultants. However, several issues arose with that firm, particularly that it had performed work for a group opposed to the pipeline and that it did not provide its cost structure or analysis.
On Wednesday, council agree to change the scope of the proposal to focus only on the two pipelines, allowing for other potential firms to bid the work.
“One of the actions we are taking today is to ... clarify or to revise the scope the rfp,” Zidek said. In addition, he said it permitted county Emergency Services Director Timothy Boyce to have some discretion in the information gathering process.
“I hope that this facilitates both a greater response from potential type of applicants for this work and also helps to address some of the concerns that have been previously raised by council,” Zidek said.
McBlain praised his colleagues.
“I did want to thank council for their efforts,” he said. “They put a lot of effort into this over the last couple of weeks and before that, towards reaching something that could move forward today.”
George Alexander, a Media resident, also approved of council’s action.
“I want to commend council with moving forward with the hazard analysis,” he said. “I would like to emphasize the urgency of getting this done because we are in danger of having an active, large, hazardous pipeline running before we understand what the risks and the response to those risks ought to be. This does need to move forward quickly.”