Revolution pipeline back in service after owner, DEP reach deal
Natural gas began flowing Monday in the Revolution pipeline, 2½ years after it slid down a rainsoaked Center Township hillside and burst into flames.
Since then, Texas-based Energy Transfer Corp. and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, its primary regulator, have been battling over whether the pipeline owner had done enough to prevent the explosion in Beaver County and whether it was doing enough to avoid another.
The company was prohibited from repairing the ruptured portion of the pipe while it worked to
stabilize the hill behind Ivy Lane, which stubbornly kept slipping, and on other steep slopes along the 40.5-mile project designed to ferry gas from fracked shale wells through Butler, Beaver, Allegheny and Washington counties.
The company’s inability to shore up sliding soil along its right of way after the explosion Sept. 10, 2018, and trouble with construction on the much larger Mariner East pipeline corridor prompted the DEP to issue a permit ban that was lifted in January 2020.
When Energy Transfer finally got the go-ahead to reroute the broken piece of pipe onto flatter ground and prepared to put Revolution back in service in the fall, the DEP intervened again, in November.
Regulators found unstable slopes that hadn’t been properly secured and ordered the company not to fill the pipe with gas and, if it had, to empty it — a sign that regulators weren’t fully sure of the status of Energy Transfer’s plans. Energy Transfer took that order to court.
Late last month, the company signed a settlement agreement with the DEP that said the Revolution pipeline could restart March 1 with increased slope monitoring. It also gave the company 60 days to submit a permanent stabilization plan for a steep hill near Penny Hollow Road.
The DEP said the company has shown that the pipeline now is overbuilt to the point that it has a high safety factor. While the DEP previously insisted that the entire right of way must be permanently stabilized before gas could flow again, the settlement gives Energy Transfer more time to reach that goal. In the meantime, instruments installed at certain slopes will measure stability, groundwater levels and ground movement.
DEP inspectors, who have visited the pipeline 43 times so far this year, have continued to mark outstanding violations but recorded progress in their inspection notes.
The settlement deal also includes a $125,000 civil penalty. That follows a record $30.6 million penalty that the DEP fined Energy Transfer in January 2020 as part of another consent order and agreement that also called on the company to repair stream and wetland damage.
In December, Energy Transfer reached an agreement with another Pennsylvania regulatory agency, the Public Utility Commission, which had also been investigating the 2018 explosion. That agreement requires the company to perform costly and frequent pipeline monitoring, especially after rain events.
The 2018 explosion, which occurred just a few days after the pipeline began flowing gas for the first time, is also the subject of ongoing investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, Energy Transfer said in its latest public filing.
The resulting fire destroyed a home, killing several pets inside, charred cars and trees and caused six highvoltage electric transmission towers to collapse.
As pipelines have emerged as a proxy battleground over fossil fuel concerns, oil and gas interests in Pennsylvania have been mobilizing to link the projects to jobs and prosperity.
In recent weeks, labor union officials have written letters to the editors of regional papers, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, urging regulators to allow the Revolution pipeline to resume transporting gas.
“It is time for the Revolution Pipeline to return to service and for Pennsylvania to make itself more attractive to business and private investment,” Ken Broadbent, business manager of the Steamfitters Local Union 449, wrote the Post-Gazette, drawing a line between environmental oversight and its economic impact on the industry.
But those who experienced the explosion had different considerations. Ivy Lane resident Barbara Goblick responded by urging the DEP to simply “hold off putting Revolution into service until the land is stable.”
Residents of Ivy Lane, the dead-end street where the pipeline slid in 2018, were alerted by text message from the county’s notification system Monday morning that Revolution was being put into service. The text arrived minutes before the scheduled startup time. A company representative also went door to door with informational flyers later in the day.
Last month, residents also were notified that a pipeline that intersects Revolution close to the rupture site would be starting up after Feb. 28. That pipeline, completed in 2019, will deliver natural gas to the Shell cracker plant near Monaca.