Tag Archives: Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration

Southern Company Stockholder Meeting 2019-05-22

In this year’s pilgrimage to Pine Mountain, we will hear how part of Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning’s compensation will be tied to meeting the company’s low-carbon goals.

When: 10AM, Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Where: The Lodge Conference Center at Callaway Gardens,
4500 Southern Pine Drive, Pine Mountain, Georgia 31822

What: Southern Company 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders

Microgrids and batteries, Annual Report

That Annual Report page on Microgrids and Batteries looks good. Until you start to notice what’s missing from the documents.

Energy Mix, Annual Report So does this comparison of energy mixes in 2007 and 2018, at least as far as “Hydro, Wind, Solar” going from 1 to 11%. However, quite lacking is Continue reading →

LNG export through Georgia and Florida presented to PHMSA 2018-05-16

PHMSA doesn’t have a public map of the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline, but it does have a map of U.S. LNG Facilities, including many in Georgia and Florida. The source slides include many assertions about safety of LNG trucks and trains, but why should we take any risk for fossil fuel export profit to a few company executives and investors we solar power has no risk of leaks or explosions?

[Detail: U.S. Southeast LNG Facilities]
Detail: U.S. Southeast LNG Facilities

I’ve pulled out this detail of the U.S. Southeast, in which you can clearly see Pivotal LNG’s Alabama, Tennessee, and three Georgia plants marked with green circles as “Peakshavers with Liquefaction”, as well as Elba Island LNG at Savannah marked with a big red box. In Florida, Eagle (Maxville?) LNG at Jacksonville and Hialeah LNG at Miami are marked with stars as “Emerging LNG facilities”.

Here’s the bigger map: Continue reading →

Spectra never bothered to check pipeline for corrosion –Spectra employee

So “the pipe will be monitored 24/7”? That’s not Spectra’s actual practice, according to an employee and according to a federal fine.

By fjgallagher for Natural Gas Watch 19 June 2013, Spectra Energy Employee: We Never Bothered to Check Natural Gas Pipeline for Corrosion,

A Spectra Energy employee acknowledged to federal inspectors that the company never conducted key tests for corrosion on a natural gas pipeline that was already operating at excess capacity, according to documents recently obtained by NaturalGasWatch.org.

There’s much more in the article, including this:

Additionally, according to another May 2, 2013 letter sent under separate cover from (PHMSA) to Holeman, Spectra failed to install equipment to monitor whether or not the natural gas pipeline in question was being affected by corrosion and could not produce any records indicating that the pipeline had, in fact, ever been tested for corrosion or that the pipeline was even structurally sound.

So that’s what “the pipe will be monitored 24/7” means. Good to know.

See Item 2 in that Final Order with fines from the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to Spectra Energy CEO Gregory L. Ebel: Continue reading →

Spectra backtracks about pipeline incident

Spectra flip-flops on major safety events as well as on whose houses are beautiful and whether Georgia cities can use gas from its pipeline from PCB-polluted Anniston, Alabama to Orlando, Florida. And Spectra was fined recently for violating both federal safety requirements and its own operating procedures, including for pipeline monitoring. Oh, and its natural gas comes from fracking.

Remember Spectra rep Andrea Grover, quoted by the VDT? Well, she’s been quoted elsewhere, too. Mike Benard wrote for CSRHUB 5 April 2013, Spectra Energy ‘Backtracks’ on Methane Incident: First: “Nothing Released …. No Smoke …. No Incident”; Then Admits: Methane & Hydrocarbons Released,

Spectra Energy Corporation (SE, NYSE) was forced to backtrack on dismissive assertions it made about a nighttime incident at its huge natural gas compressor station in Bedford County, PA, after persistent neighbors and a reporter kept pressing the company and state regulators for facts.

A natural gas compressor station, like the ones Spectra says will be along its proposed AL-GA-FL pipeline, maybe in Dougherty County, maybe in Lowndes County; we don’t know.

Now Spectra could say this was a different kind of compressor because it’s a different kind of operation in Pennsylvania. What kind? Fracking: Continue reading →