Alliance flaring off contaminated gas
Towering flames visible for kilometres
ARCOLA — On Friday afternoon, Penny Adams got a call at work.
It was Alliance Pipeline, letting her know it was going to flare off hydrogen sulphide (H2S) at two stacks down the road from her Arcola-area home, after the poisonous gas got into its pipeline.
As the neighbour closest to the site, she might find the noise bothersome, Alliance told her.
Would she like to stay at a hotel?
On Monday, Adams cast her hand toward her horses and llamas, and the dogs she fosters for Bright Eyes dog rescue.
“Good luck finding a hotel that will take all these guys,” she said with a laugh and a shake of her head.
The noise “hasn’t been too, too bad” so far, she said; she’s just “putting on some white noise throughout the night, trying to drown it out and pretend it’s the combines going full bore.”
When the flares started up Sunday night, she and her husband thought it sounded “like a jet engine had just taken off,” she said.
The orange flames, about 25 metres high, are visible for kilometres.
Head over a slight ridge just south of Arcola and they reach toward the sky, each with a delicate curl of dark smoke circling into the heat haze. Close up, they are loud. Really loud. Shooting from two stacks set back from an innocuous grid road, the flames emit nothing short of a roar.
The noise is kind of like a giant blowtorch, above which you have to raise your voice to be heard.
A security guard at the site mentions the sound is topping out at around 130 decibels.
Tim Dacey, regional manager of Canadian operations with Alliance, says the sound, heat and air are being monitored to ensure they meet regulations.
While she appreciated the heads-up from Alliance, Adams said the company representative told her they weren’t sure just how loud the noise would be or for how long it would last.
“That didn’t really inspire a whole lot of confidence,” she said.
“But I really do think they need a better system than burning stuff off. I mean, they’re burning off poisonous gas? Oh geez, thanks.”
Natural gas processor and transporter Keyera Corp. said Friday that the toxic gas got into the Alliance pipeline after a “brief operational upset” at its Simonette gas plant in northwestern Alberta two days earlier.
As a result, the B.C.-to-- Chicago system has been shut since Friday, with gas being burned off at Arcola and Alameda.
In an online notice, Alliance said flaring was the safest way to get rid of the gas that was contaminated with hydrogen sulphide.
It’s not known yet what caused the problem at Simonette or how much H2S got into the Alliance system as a result, said Keyera spokesman Nick Kuzyk.
“There’s some data that we are able to extract from the detection equipment that we can analyze over the course of this week, once everything’s back up and running,” he said.
“That’s still to be determined, but priority No. 1 is getting Alliance back up and running.”
Dacey said the Arcola burn is going “exceptionally well,” and is expected to last for “another couple of days” until the company determines “all things are back to normal.”
Half a dozen times in a five-minute interview, he said the safety of employees, the public and the environment is the primary focus.
Equipment at each of the site’s four corners is monitoring H2S levels, but so far there have been no readings.
Dacey said 12 workers are at the Arcola site — security, flare professionals from Alberta and safety professionals monitoring employees and the environment.
While flaring is pretty standard industry practice in Saskatchewan, Dacey acknowledged flames of this size are “not a normal occurrence.”
“The flares are that big because of the volume of gas,” he said.
“If we see anything that we’re not satisfied with, we would shut down, correct that and continue.
“But as of this point, everything is what we expect to see and we’re quite satisfied with how things are progressing.”