Crisscrossing gas pipelines in Beaver County unnerve residents
Susan Michael has been so preoccupied with the Energy Transfer pipeline that exploded at the end of her Beaver County block in September of last year that she barely registered that another natural gas pipeline is coming to the neighborhood.
It almost didn’t feel real until she looked out the window of her home in Center Township last week and saw trees being cut down.
National Fuel Gas Supply Corp. has just broken ground on a 12inch pipeline in Beaver County — one that will travel from Center Township to Shell Chemical’s petrochemical plant in Potter Township.
Before it gets there, the National Fuel pipeline will cross the Energy Transfer’s Revolution pipeline just a few hundred feet from where Revolution ruptured.
September’s break has been connected to a landslide in an area where steep drops surround the
backyards of residents on Ivy Lane. With one house destroyed in the fire and another recently purchased by Energy Transfer, Ms. Michael’s home that she shares with her mother who is in hospice will be the closest to the crossing.
“I’m surrounded,” she said.
If it were just the National Fuel line, Ms. Michael said, she probably could let it go.
“But with two pipelines kind of circling me, I’m not feeling good about it at all,” she said.
Texas-based Energy Transfer has yet to bring erosion in that area under control. The company has been banned by state regulators from construction work to fix the pipeline and get it running again.
National Fuel said that won’t be an issue for the work on its pipeline.
Different agencies oversee the two pipelines — New York-based National Fuel had to apply for a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, while the Revolution pipeline is solely under state discretion.
National Fuel spokeswoman Carly Manino said it’s not known yet which pipeline will be buried deeper at the crossing. The two companies are coordinating that, she said. Federal regulations require the pipelines to be at least 12 inches apart.
The $20.2 million National Fuel pipeline is being built to bring gas to the natural gas power plant at Shell’s facility.
In its first weekly construction report submitted to FERC last month, National Fuel said it has begun installing right-of-way markers, putting up erosion barriers and felling trees. It anticipates being in service this summer.
What’s next for Revolution?
The two pipelines will cross on land now owned by Energy Transfer after it bought out two landowners closest to the explosion site.
It’s expected that the company will seek to reroute the Revolution pipeline to the flatter, higher ground that once held the home of Sam and Joyce Rosati, their young niece and their horses and dogs.
That’s what Ned Mitrovich, Center Township engineer, anticipates based on conversations with the company.
But no documents to that effect have been submitted yet, he said. Instead, Energy Transfer is focused on what it calls Phase 1 — demolishing what remains of a burned home, hauling away debris and remediating that land, Mr. Mitrovich said.
He said the township hopes to organize a meeting with Energy Transfer and residents so the company can explain its plans for further construction.
Those plans will have to be approved first by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which announced a permit ban on Feb. 8. Unhappy with Energy Transfer’s progress in getting erosion under control, the agency said no pending or new permit applications from the company will be considered until more progress is made.
The DEP has sent inspectors to the Revolution pipeline right of way since the Feb. 8 order and those inspectors have continued to report slips and slope failures.
On Feb. 11, an inspector “observed multiple landslides that started on the pipeline right of way and have left the right of way impacting Raccoon Creek.” The inspection covered sites in Center and Independence townships.
The following day, an inspector visiting New Sewickley Township wrote that even where slides are stabilized, the right of way “does not appear capable of resisting erosion.”
Three days later, an inspector visited Center Township again after Energy Transfer reported a slope failure that discharged sediment into a stream.
‘Take our medicine’
During a recent call with analysts, Energy Transfer’s executives admitted the company “made some mistakes,” and will “take our medicine and fix those mistakes and complete good projects from this point forward.
“Not to insinuate that everything we’ve done has been bad,” CEO Kelcy Warren said. “It’s just we’ve made mistakes that we’re not proud of. So you’ll see that improve.”
He was talking specifically about Pennsylvania, where, in addition to the Revolution pipeline rupture, the company’s Mariner East pipelines also have been riddled with problems.
Mr. Warren said Energy Transfer has made organizational changes to address these issues. And so the construction team now reports to him directly.
The company told investors that it would be submitting documents related to its restoration plan in late February, and the DEP confirmed receiving the plan, which is under review.
“We expect that they’ll review and approve those documents within 30 days, which would allow us to commence the restoration effort,” an Energy Transfer executive said during the earnings call.
DEP spokesman Neil Shader said there’s no set timetable for the agency’s review.
“I know that we were kind of open-ended on some of our language in that Feb. 8 letter on when we would begin approving permits again,” he said.
That will depend on the company’s ability to comply with an earlier order that DEP issued about a month after the explosion, he said. Energy Transfer is appealing that order before the Environmental Hearing Board.
Landslide prone
In its federal permit application, submitted to FERC months before the Energy Transfer pipeline burst in Center Township, National Fuel noted that its “project is in an area of high landslide incidence.”
One of the 4.5 miles of National Fuel’s pipeline, or 22 percent, had the “highest susceptibility to landslides,” according to the permit doc- uments.
To account for that, National Fuel said it would use silt fences and other temporary erosion control devices, and could use permanent material to support the pipeline if necessary.
In the area where the project, called Line N to Monaca, crosses Revolution, the soil type is described by National Fuel’s engineering consultants as highly erodable and prompting revegetation concerns. The slopes there are between 15 and 25 percent.
Ms. Manino, the National Fuel spokeswoman, said her company has been careful in routing its pipeline to avoid slopes.
“National Fuel’s pipeline will run straight up the hill and will cross the Revolution pipeline perpendicularly in an area that avoids side-slope construction of our pipeline,” she said.
After the Revolution explosion, National Fuel’s engineering consultants made “additional assessments” of geologic conditions and found it was not necessary to reroute their line, Ms. Manino said.
Oversight issues
Pipeline crossings aren’t uncommon. Shell’s Falcon pipeline, which is being built to carry ethane from Washington County and Ohio to the cracker plant, also will cross the Revolution pipeline in Raccoon Township.
The infrastructure in the ground is out of sight and out of mind until something happens.
For the traumatized residents of Ivy Lane, September’s Revolution explosion has brought the business of pipelines to the surface and heightened their attention to National Fuel’s line. The residents have monitored the access roads being built and the trees cut along the right of way. They have reached out to their township officials and regulators to keep their experience on their radar.
“The human element just seemed to be bypassed,” said Karen Gdula, who also lives on Ivy Lane.
While Ms. Gdula deals with representatives from the two pipeline companies, her neighbor, Ms. Michael, has been calling politicians and regulatory agencies.
“What I’m finding out in all of this is nobody has complete oversight authority,” Ms. Michael said. “Everybody has a piece of this.”
When she called the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency directed her to the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration, which oversees the safety of operating interstate pipelines.
When the Pittsburgh PostGazette reached out to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration, the agency declined to say whether it had any involvement in monitoring the construction of National Fuel’s line and instead referred inquiries to the company and to FERC.
The Beaver County Conservation District, as an agent of the DEP, in December granted stream crossing and erosion permits to National Fuel that were necessary to build that pipeline. Executive director Jim Shaner said he doesn’t think the explosion changed anything about how National Fuel would have handled erosion and sedimentation control.
Ms. Michael said on Thursday that she feels “stuck” in an unnerving waiting game.
“I talked to a Realtor,” she said. “The situation I’m in is, ‘There’s a pipeline here and there’s a pipeline there that blew up, but it’s a nice little house.’”