RIGZONE – The US Energy Infrastructure: Is it Safe?.
First, the good news regarding energy transportation in the United States: about 99.5 percent of all material transported by either railroad cars or by pipelines reaches its destination. However, the accident rate is still too high, and it is even up slightly for gas liquids, even when adjusted for volumes and miles traveled. And most pipeline incidents are happening on new pipeline systems, not older ones, according to speakers at a recent Energy Symposium hosted by the University of Houston. In recent years, with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in unconventional shale formations becoming the new norm, production levels for crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids have shot up, leaving the industry racing in the wake to build an infrastructure to catch up. The quantity and quality of pipeline networks across the country varies, with Texas and the Gulf Coast region having a more established pipeline system than states like North Dakota, where natural gas production from the Bakken shale formation routinely overwhelms the existing infrastructure and soon becomes necessary in the Bakken and in other formations to consider other infrastructure options, Steve Magness, partner at Cogent Energy Solutions, noted. – See more at: http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/136089/The_US_Energy_Infrastructure_Is_it_Safe#sthash.jYezdmsu.dpuf
