Pigging-- In The U.K. And The USA

Thursday, The Guardian reported that David Cameron was pushing for fracking in the U.K. again, this time using shop-worn conservative talking points from the U.S. that "ruling out fracking on environmental grounds would cost Britain in jobs and cheaper energy bills." Environmentalists in Britain are warning that fracking will "pollute drinking water and scar the landscape."

Hundreds of protesters are gathering to disrupt work at a potential fracking site in Sussex this summer.

But addressing staff at Crown Paint, in Darwen, Lancashire, the prime minister suggested that there was no question of there being dire environmental consequences in the UK such as "earthquakes and fire coming out of taps." The government would make sure the industry was properly regulated and not allow any "unsafe" practices.

He said: "I think we would be making a big mistake as a nation if we did not think hard about how to encourage fracking and cheaper prices right here in the UK.

"If you look at what's happening in America with the advent of shale gas and fracking, their energy costs in business and their gas prices are half the level of ours.

"Nothing is going to happen in this country unless its environmentally safe. There is no question of having earthquakes and fire coming out of taps and all the rest of it. There will be very clear environmental procedures and certificates you will have to get before you can frack."

He promised communities could get £1m compensation "immediately" for allowing fracking in their area, before his advisers later clarified that he actually meant £100,000.

Under coalition plans, communities will get the lump sum and then a 1% share of revenue if drilling in a particular area succeeds. This could run into millions of pounds.

Cameron said households in the US had seen their energy bills come down "very quickly" because of the process and Britain could stand to gain from the same lower gas prices.

...A ban on fracking was lifted by the government last year, after it decided tremors caused by drilling near Blackpool did not mean the technique posed a significant risk of earthquakes.

The decision to allow the process has paved the way for the extraction of trillions of cubic feet of shale gas exploiting 60% of the countryside, according to some reports.

However, ministers have admitted that local opposition, especially in the Tory heartlands of the south-east, could limit the amount extracted.

James Stafford of Oilprice.com did a piece on the technological developments in oil pipeline leak detection that he suggested we share with DWT readers. It addresses pollution but not Climate Change. He takes a detailed look at the current state of the pipeline sector and how companies now have within their grasp the technology to make their operations much more efficient and safer. But the sector is notoriously slow in adopting new technologies. What he wants to ask is when they'll start to use the new technologies available to them or if they'll just continue along their current (rather unpopular) path.

The 2010 Kalamazoo spill and the 2013 Exxon leak in Arkansas are the most glaring incidents, but these are just the big leaks that are found right away and reported.

Most leaks are found eventually-- but there is money to be saved and damage to be avoided by catching them at the smallest rupture. Right now, we rely on pigs in the pipeline to do this.

It’s called “pigging.” Pigs are inspection gauges that can perform various maintenance operations on a pipeline-- from inspection to cleaning-- without stopping the pipeline flow. The first “pigs” were used strictly for cleaning and they got their name from the squealing noise they emitted while travelling through the pipeline. The current generation of “smart pigs” can detect corrosion in the pipeline and are thus relied on for leak detection.

The Kalamazoo and Arkansas leaks were massive and caused by complete pipeline ruptures. These are rare incidents that account for less than 10% of leaks. But the small leaks-- those that traditional pipeline detection systems don’t catch-- account for more than 90% of US pipeline leaks.

According to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the majority of leaks are smaller but can persist for months or even years, and those that are even reported are generally done so by people who have stumbled upon them by accident.

The fact remains that current systems and technologies only detect 50% of leaks. We need new solutions if we want to avoid another Arkansas, or another Kalamazoo.

A case in point is this: A SCADA system was working normally on the Pegasus pipeline in Arkansas at the time of the rupture and helped Exxon verify that an accident had occurred. Pegasus did not, however, have a Computational Pipeline Monitoring (CPM) program in place on the pipe. It wasn’t enough. Indeed, in late 2012, PHMSA issued a 17-page warning to Exxon about its insufficient pipeline leak detection.

Then we have Keystone XL, which is always in the spotlight, most recently when TransCanada said it would opt out of new pipeline leak detection systems and stick with traditional methods that many believe are not good enough.

The 90%+ of leaks are small and more of a concern for the miles and miles of aging pipelines that crisscross the US, while new pipelines, like Keystone XL will benefit from new technologies during their construction, such as better pipe metallurgy and better welding. This will mean less chance of leaks, but not a zero chance. The fact is that the leak detection systems that will be used by new pipelines like Keystone XL (assuming it gets the green light), are not really any better than the current fare.

There is new technology floating around out there-- but it’s new and relatively untested in the marketplace.

RealSens remote-sensing pipeline detection technology aims to pick up where SCADA and the pigs leave off, detecting leaks over an entire pipeline network.

According to Banica, Synodon’s CEO, realSens can actually save companies money by detecting the leaks sooner and faster and thus reducing the amount of spilled product and the environmental damage. But it’s a new technology that was only introduced into the market 12 months ago.

Still, some of the big operators remain skeptical of new pipeline leak detection systems, as their cost-saving applications are as yet unproven.

“The first hurdle is that operators might not be aware that it exists and what the capabilities are. The second hurdle is that they have a hard time believing it works and have to see proof through customer field tests, which are currently ongoing,” Banica told Oilprice.com.

But the issue of pipeline leak detection will increasingly be on everyone’s radar following the Quebec train disaster that killed at least 38 people, and counting. No pipeline failure has ever come close to this level of human carnage. This will help shape the transport debate.

What the Quebec tragedy demonstrates, says Banica, is that pipelines are a far better option than rail. “Whereas pipelines do not kill as many people as rail (or even truck transport, as more drivers die due to accidents), they do pose a bigger environmental risk than rail due to larger potential leaks and releases.”

In the important video below, the lady with the fracked up farm talks about a company called Chesapeake, oil baron Aubrey McClendon's company. Another part of this story that somehow gets overlooked by the corporate media is that our political elites are selling us out, selling out the health and futures of our species, in fact. Watch the video, but keep in mind that McClendon has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians running for Congress. Although most of them are Republican, not all of them are. There's something else they all have in common. All of them, regardless of political party, are willing-- eager in most cases-- to carry water for the energy oligarchy that McClendon represents. He's lavished thousands and thousands of dollars on the political hacks who work assiduously to make sure taxpayer dollars get funneled directly into the pockets of the energy barons like McClendon himself. Technically these "contributions" are bribes of course-- and McCelndon and the politicians he owns should all be imprisoned-- but in McClendon's world the payoffs are "investments." He's helped finance the political careers of homestate lackeys Tom Cole (R-OK), John Sullivan (R-OK), Mary Fallin (R-OK), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK) but by no means does he stop giving at his state's boundaries. McClendon is a major donor to Big Oil whores from one end of the country to the other-- from Scott Brown (R-MA), John Boehner (R-OH), Nick Rahall (D-WV), Fred Upton (R-MI), George Allen (R-VA), David McKinley (R-WV), Joe Manchin (D-WV) to George W. Bush, John McCain and, of course, Mitt Romney.

And he also helps fund the Chesapeake Energy PAC, which give more hundreds of thousands of dollars to more Big Energy shills in Congress who will always vote for the Big Oil and Big Coal agendas. So far this year-- and they're only getting started, they've goven over $150,000 to candidates, almost all of them Republicans... almost. Tucked in there among the usual suspects and energy industry shills like Tom Cole (R-OK), Eric Cantor (R-VA), Joe Barton (R-TX), Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), were the payoffs to the "Democrats" who always cross the aisle to vote against the 99% and with the Big Energy barons like Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO) and Nick Rahall (WV).

In the 2010 cycle the PAC spent $367,210 on congressional races, mostly helping Republicans beat Democrats, but also helping corrupt conservative Democrats beat progressive challengers-- or just rewarding them for a job well done. Funny that they gave the Democratic House leaders hefty payoffs-- $3,500 for Clyburn, $5,000 for Hoyer and $10,000 for Pelosi. In Mark Ames' great 2012 report on McClendon in the Daily Banter, he labels McClendon "one of America's biggest oligarchs" and compares him to the Russian criminals and sociopaths who have taken over that country's natural resources with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the wholesale looting of that country by a few well-connected and ruthless local John Galt types.