It is especially interesting that spokespersons (and the newspaper reporter)are attempting to attribute this large pipeline rupture to cold weather. Pipeline must have been awfully close to the surface and must have been really low temps......There was a pipeline rupture in Texas Yesterday too!!!

Gas line rupture likened to booms

Source: Saturday State Times/Morning Advocate

Publication date: Jan 29, 2000

BLANCHARD - About 50 residents had to evacuate their homes for two hours Thursday when a natural gas line blew. "It sounded like three sonic booms going off at once," said Dick Bostwick, 82, who was reading the newspaper when the 20-inch line blew.

There was no fire or explosion and nobody was hurt. The boom was caused by gas escaping, officials said. The line was bypassed to keep natural gas flowing to Shreveport, said Richard Wheatley, a spokesman for Reliant Energy in Houston.

Bostwick's home and others scattered within a mile of the rupture were ordered evacuated because of the potential danger the escaping gas posed. It wasn't immediately known if the blowout was caused by Thursday's cold snap.

Cold temperatures can contribute to gas line blowouts by causing the ground to shift or moisture around pipes to freeze.

Evacuees were allowed to return to their homes after gas was shut off to the line off La. 173 in the Caddo Parish community just north of Shreveport.

A valve was closed in the ruptured line, and gas was routed to a secondary line. A spokesman for Reliant Energy Gas Transmission said pieces of the ruptured line will be analyzed to determine the reason for the failure. Not many of the evacuated homes actually lost heat. Reliant spokesman Scott Mundy said only one home lost gas service. Some evacuees stayed with friends and relatives while others went to a makeshift shelter set up at Northwood High School. Publication date: Jan 29, 2000

) 1999, NewsReal, Inc.

Link to story:

http://beta.newsreal.com/cgi-bin/NewsService?osform_template=pages/newsrealStory&ID=newsreal&storypath=News/Story_2000_01_30.NRdb@2@3@3@121&path=News/Category.NRdb@2@16@2@1

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 30, 2000

Answers

At this rate we're going to have a natural gas shortage just from the ruptures cropping up all over the U.S.

(Disclaimer, this would never have anything to do with Y2K)

-- Guy Daley (guydaley@bwn.net), January 30, 2000.

Seems odd doesn't it. Y2K has come and gone yet these annoying reports crop up. My money bets they'll blame it on any thing but the real reason.

-- kevin (innxxxs@yahoo.com), January 30, 2000.

There were two major gas line explosions on Thursday (including this one), One in Texas and One in Louisiana. Is there any possibility that they are linked?

see:

LA: 20-inch gas main blows. Officials say weather probably not to blame http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002Qpm

Texas explosion:

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002R4i

______________________________________________________________________ ______________

Just to avoid any confusion, this is an update of a story posted a couple of days ago. I meant to write update in the heading. Anyway the treason it is significant is because it offers a different picture of the possible underlying cause:

This is from the original report the LA pipeline break on thursday which suggests that weather was not the problem:

"He said it was too early to tell for sure, but engineers doubted that Thursday's cold and snow had anything to do with the break. "We're going to analyze the sections of pipe to see exactly what caused this," he said.

The break occurred at a creek crossing, but the pipeline was buried and not exposed to the weather, Wheatley said.

Monitors noticed a pressure drop at 7:55 a.m., and the line was blocked off within 50 minutes, he said. "

yet the latest version suggest otherwise :

"It wasn't immediately known if the blowout was caused by Thursday's cold snap. Cold temperatures can contribute to gas line blowouts by causing the ground to shift or moisture around pipes to freeze."

In my view the second version is both misleading and a clear example of media spin.

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 30, 2000.

Hi, Carl

Are you meaning to imply we're getting cross-posted cascading pipeline pops perpetuated by ballooning buffers? Or not?

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), January 30, 2000.

Hi Rachel, I dunno, need someone knowledgable about the interconnectness issue. Are the Texas/Louisiana pipelines linked in any way to a central operation? Could it be a SCADA problem like the one mentioned in DOT y2k pipeline alert/report from last July. I'm providing a link to that report for anyone who'd like to read it:

http://chemsafety.gov/y2k/brochure9907.htm

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 30, 2000.

if a little cool weather causes enough of a ground shift to cause all these explosions, why don't we hear about explosions when they have earthquakes? surely even the small earthquakes are probably more of a shift and from the cold? or not? anyone?

-- boop (leafyspurge@hotmail.com), January 30, 2000.