US regulator: Plains must test California pipeline

OREANDA-NEWS. May 25, 2015. Federal pipeline regulators have ordered Plains All American Pipeline to conduct a detailed analysis of the cause of a crude pipeline spill near Santa Barbara, California, before restarting the system, a process that could take months.

The corrective action order issued yesterday by the US Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) requires Plains to conduct a metallurgical analysis of the failed section of pipe, which leaked as much as 2,500bl of crude both onshore and into the Pacific ocean. The company must also complete a root cause analysis of the accident before it can file a restart plan with the agency, meaning it could be months before operations resume.

Cleanup efforts continued today to capture as much of the crude as possible. A four-mile section of Refugio beach in Santa Barbara county, just north of Los Angeles, was coated in crude, according to the US Coast Guard, while two oil slicks totaling nine miles long were in the water.

According to PHMSA, at around 2:30pm ET on 19 May Plains officials in a Midland, Texas, control center noticed signs of a possible leak in the 24-inch, 150,000 b/d Line 901 pipeline, and shut down the line. The pipeline was in the process of being restarted after being offline for routine maintenance. At 3:43pm ET Santa Barbara emergency response officials reported an oil sheen at Refugio Beach. At 4:30pm ET Plains crews affirmed there was a breach in the 20-mile pipeline about a quarter of a mile from the water on the north side of California Highway 101.

The pipeline runs from ExxonMobil's Las Flores Canyon crude separation and storage facility located about 20 miles west of Santa Barbara to a Plains terminal in Gaviota. From there Plains ships crude to refineries including the Santa Maria unit of Phillips 66's 120,000 b/d San Francisco refinery system.

The pipeline was built between 1987 and 1990, according to PHMSA. An internal pipeline inspection tool known as a smart pig inspected the line on 5 May but the results have not yet been analyzed. Similar internal inspections were done in June 2007 and June 2012, which were followed by a number of excavations of the pipe to examine anomalies found by the inspections. Most of the anomalies were related to external corrosion near the welds joining sections of pipe.