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TransCanada Pipeline Explodes in West Virginia

July 4, 2019

TransCanada Pipeline Explodes in West Virginia

A newly installed TransCanada natural gas pipeline exploded early Thursday in the remote Nixon Ridge area of Marshall County in West Virginia. 

No injuries were reported but flames and smoke from the blast could be seen as far as 20 miles away, residents told local media. Area police told CBS News the fire was “very large—if you can see it from your house, evacuate.”

“It sounded like a freight train coming through, or a tornado, and the sky lit up bright orange, and then I got up and looked out the window and flames were shooting I don’t know how far into the sky,” Tina Heath-Chaplin, of Moundsville, told WPXI.

TransCanada—the same company behind the Keystone pipeline—said the explosion has been contained and an investigation is underway.

“As soon as the issue was identified, emergency response procedures were enacted and the segment of impacted pipeline was isolated. The fire was fully extinguished by approximately 8:30 a.m,” the company commented Thursday.

“The cause of this issue is not yet known,” TransCanada continued. “The site of the incident has been secured and we are beginning the process of working with applicable regulators to investigate, including the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.”

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This is drone footage from @MarshallCoWVOEM Director Tom Hart says this is at the endd of Nixon Ridge near Fish Creek. The explosion left a crater. The DEP estimates 10 acres are affected @WTRF7News

Robert Burrough, the director with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s Eastern Regional Office, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the affected line is likely TransCanada’s $1.6 billion, 160-mile Leach XPress pipeline, which started service in January.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

News Not to Miss: Oil Train Spill, China Petrochemical Deal, Methane Leaks

June 30, 2018

News Not to Miss: Oil Train Spill, China Petrochemical Deal, Methane Leaks

It’s hard to keep up with the flood of news these days. Here’s your weekly round-up of news not to miss from DeSmog.

Justin Mikulka has been on the oil train beat for years. He’s documented how the oil boom and pipeline bottleneck in the Bakken Shale has led to more, longer, and heavier trains shuttling oil across North America and how various factors also have led to another type of boom: the literal “boom” of exploding oil trains. (In fact, train operators have given them the nickname “bomb trains.”)

This week, Mikulka writes about the latest oil train incident, this time involving a BNSF train carrying tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, across northwestern Iowa.

While it fortunately resulted in no fire or explosion, the June 22 derailment did release an estimated 230,000 gallons of oil into a flooded Iowa river.

Of particular note is the fact that the Iowa oil train crash is the first one involving the new, safer DOT-117R rail tank cars, which were supposed to improve the safety of oil trains.

China and West Virginia: A Fracking-to-Plastics Dream in Appalachia

The shale oil and gas industry, fueled by fracking, is helping pump record volumes of production in the U.S. But with all those fossil fuels flooding the market, they have to go somewhere.

That’s why the state of West Virginia is spearheading an effort to build out a massive petrochemical storage and production hub in the Ohio River Valley. In fact, last November the state signed an $83 billion deal with Chinese investors to make this fracking-to-plastics dream a reality. (For context, West Virginia’s total gross domestic product was only $76.8 billion last year.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

TransCanada’s New ‘Best-In-Class’ Gas Pipeline Explodes in West Virginia, Causing Fiery Blast

June 8, 2018

TransCanada’s New ‘Best-In-Class’ Gas Pipeline Explodes in West Virginia, Causing Fiery Blast

Gas pipeline flames

The fire was visible for miles, local TV news reported. Police warned anyone who could see the flames to evacuate — and the Emergency Management Agency director of neighboring Ohio County said officials had received dozens of 911 calls from locals able to see the fire, which was extinguished roughly four hours later. The blast was so powerful that one resident told a local CBS affiliate it felt like a tornado was passing through.

No one was injured, and no property damage was reported, TransCananda said in a statement released today, adding that the cause of the explosion was not yet determined.

The Leach XPress pipeline is just six months old, having been put into service on January 1, 2018.

At the time, TransCanada emphasized that it was built quickly — but safely. “Leach XPress was done in less than a year,” Scott Castleman, manager of U.S. Gas Communications for TransCanada, said in a January statement.

“We’re looking forward to generations of safe operations,” he added. “This is truly a best-in-class pipeline and we look forward to many years of safe, reliable, and efficient operation on behalf of our customers.”

Leach XPress is the first in a series of major TransCanada pipeline construction projects — and part of a larger sprint to build out oil and gas pipelines nationwide, spurred by an urgent push to get shale gas and oil to market.

“This is our first major pipeline in our growth portfolio,” Castleman said in January. “There’s currently about 8 and a half billion dollars in pipeline projects in the works for the U.S. and TransCanada.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

West Virginia Democratic Candidate Hauled From Legislative Hearing for Listing Off Corporate Donors to Fossil Fuel-Friendly Lawmakers

February 14, 2018

A packed House Chamber takes in Acting Governor Earl Ray Tomblin's speech, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011, in Charleston, W.Va., during the State of the State address. (AP Photo/Howie McCormick)
Photo: Howie McCormick/AP

WEST VIRGINIA DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE HAULED FROM LEGISLATIVE HEARING FOR LISTING OFF CORPORATE DONORS TO FOSSIL FUEL-FRIENDLY LAWMAKERS

LISSA LUCAS IS a Democrat running for a state House seat in West Virginia’s District 7. Part of her campaign’s goal is to challenge the stranglehold of the fossil fuel industry on the state’s politics.

So in the second week of February, when the legislature held public hearings on House Bill 4268 — which would allow for the drilling on properties with multiple owners if 75 percent, rather than all, of the owners enter into a lease — Lucas came to voice her opposition to the legislation, believing it to undermine the rights of property owners.

And to the chagrin of the West Virginia House of Delegates, she came bearing receipts.

She stood on the floor and read off corporate donors to the legislators moving the legislation — going through the gamut of fossil fuel companies dominant in West Virginia, from Dominion to FirstEnergy.

Republican Delegate John Shott, who was overseeing the hearing, took offense at Lucas’s reading of publicly available campaign finance data, equating it to a personal attack.

“Miss Lucas, we ask no personal comments be made,” he told her over his microphone.

“This is not personal comments,” she replied.

“It is a personal comment and I’m gonna call you out of order if you talk about individuals on the committee. So if you would just address the bill. If not, I’ll ask you to please step down,” he said to her.

She continued to list off donors, her microphone was cut off, and legislative security was called to remove her from the chamber. Watch it below:

In an interview with The Intercept, Lucas explained that she traveled to the capitol from the northern part of the state the day before the hearing to make sure she could say her piece.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

EPA Orders Testing for GenX Contamination Near Chemours Plant in West Virginia

January 26, 2018

The Teflon Toxin

DuPont introduced GenX in 2009 to replace PFOA, also known as C8, a chemical it had used for decades to make Teflon and other…

THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY has asked Chemours to test water near its plant in West Virginia for the presence of the chemical GenX. In a January 11 letter to Andrew Hartten, Chemours’ principal project manager for corporate remediation, Kate McManus, acting director of the EPA’s water protection division, noted that GenX has already “been detected in three on-site production wells and one on-site drinking water well” at the company’s factory in West Virginia, which is known as Washington Works.

McManus also referred to GenX contamination near the Chemours factory in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where DuPont and its spinoff Chemours dumped approximately 200,000 pounds of GenX into the Cape Fear River since 1980, according to Detlef Knappe, a North Carolina State University professor who has studied the contamination. In that time, more than 200,000 people have been exposed to GenX in their drinking water.

“EPA is concerned that drinking water wells in the vicinity of the Washington Works facility may similarly be contaminated by GenX,” the letter explained.

DuPont introduced GenX in 2009 to replace PFOA, also known as C8, a chemical it had used for decades in North Carolina, West Virginia, and other locations to make Teflon and other products. Like GenX, PFOA escaped the West Virginia plant and seeped into local drinking water. The contamination — and the fact that DuPont executives knew about it and hid their knowledge — set off a mammoth class-action suit, which DuPont settled for $671 million.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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