After admitting that shoddy work on a girth weld caused the Keystone pipeline to leak tar sands oil near Freeman in April 2016, Canadian pipeline operator Transcanada—now TC Energy—inspected nine similar girth welds on its pipeline and reported they were sound and required no repair.
They must not have checked the girth weld that blew out last December in Washington County, Kansas, very carefully:
A third-party review of a pipeline spill that released 500,000 gallons of crude oil onto Kansas farmland and a nearby stream was caused by a crack in the metal pipe that eventually ruptured under pressure.
…The “Root Cause Failure Analysis” for the so-called “Milepost 14 incident” reached the same conclusion as an independent analysis of the metal pipeline released in February.
“The primary cause of the rupture was a progressive fatigue crack that originated at a girth weld connecting a manufactured elbow fitting to the pipe constructed across Mill Creek (in Kansas),” the operator of the pipeline, TC Energy, said in a press release Friday.
The company said that during construction of this segment of the Keystone pipeline, which as completed in 2011, “inadvertent bending stresses sufficient to initiate a crack” occurred on the elbow fitting.
Over time, and under the high pressure needed to push the oil down the pipeline, the crack worsened, eventually resulting in the leak [Paul Hammel, “Massive Pipeline Spill Caused by Crack Created During Installation, Third-Party Review Concludes,” Nebraska Examiner, 2023.04.21].
While the 2016 spill resulted from a bad weld, the 2022 spill resembles the 2017 spill in Marshall County, South Dakota, in that sloppy installation cracked the pipeline:
The RCFA revealed that a unique set of circumstances occurred at this location, which originated during the construction of the pipeline segment, and led to the failure at Milepost 14.
- The primary cause of the rupture was a progressive fatigue crack that originated at a girth weld connecting a manufactured elbow fitting to the pipe constructed across Mill Creek. This girth weld transitioned the pipe wall thickness from the elbow fitting to the adjacent piping and was completed at a fabrication facility. The RCFA confirmed the welding workmanship was compliant with applicable codes and standards.
- During construction, the pipe segment was subject to inadvertent bending stresses sufficient to initiate a crack at a shallow lack of fusion feature in the girth weld. Bending stresses during construction also led to a deformation in the elbow fitting and a wrinkle in the adjacent piping. Further, the design of the weld transition created a stress concentration point, making the pipe at this location more susceptible to bending stresses. This resulted in the initiation of a circumferential crack in the weld, which led to failure through operations after over a decade.
- The findings are consistent with the initial metallurgical and mechanical investigation released in February 2023, which also noted the elbow fitting and pipe met all strength and material property design and code requirements.
- The report notes that throughout its operational history, the Milepost 14 segment operated below its temperature and pressure design limits; this section of the Keystone system has never operated above 72 percent Specific Minimum Yield Strength (SMYS) [TC Energy press release, in Derek Nester, “TC Energy Shares Key Findings of Root Cause and Commitments to Actions Regarding Milepost 14 Incident,” Sunflower State Radio, 2023.04.21].
Note that last line: even operating well below capacity, the poorly constructed northern Kansas segment of the Keystone pipeline couldn’t hold its liquor and upchucked into Mill Creek.
Last month the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration ordered Transcanada/TC Energy to inspect its girth welds again. Maybe they’ll take a closer look this time than they did after the 2016 Freeman spill.
The four unions that had an agreement with TC Energy supported Uncle Joe.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trade-unions-representing-laid-off-keystone-xl-workers-silent-report-shows-thousands-job-losses
I’ve written before about my brief experience working with Oklahoma based pipeline welders from Tulsa in 1964…and things probably haven’t changed much in 50 years. “Gypsy welders” travel the world and are a sub-culture of hillbilly “honkey tonkers” who by their own description “work hard and play hard”. They believe they are the best craftsmen in the world and take pride in their ability to work quickly and well. They hate to have to “crack a weld” and redo their work due to a “bubble”. While every weld is supposed to be x-rayed by an independent contractor, the “X-Ray Hand” can be persuaded to “miss a few” or take what they call a “top down picture”. All pipelines will break at a weld or fracture a pipe, sooner or later. As the pipeliners used to say “By the time she breaks, we’ll be down the road.”
Yeah Arlo, I worked with welders making tank haulers at Elk Point. I took the job for training but they cancelled that. I just cut the heavy steel they used. I learned to weld on my own. A leg falling of a sculpture doesn’t really matter in comparison. Those boys did play hard and work hard.
Another example of Republicans ‘Doing it on the cheap’.