Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Kinder Morgan has a facinating past, but not such a facinating present. The pipe that was broken in Burnaby Tuesday is exposing the corrosive underbelly that lies 3 feet below Kinder Morgans tender underbelly.
Reported in The Tyee.ca back in September 2005, Kinder Morgan had been hit with a corrective action order from the US Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, PHMSA.
What was being reported as ‘A widespread failure’ to address adequately, outside force damage could lead us to the conclusion that when Kinder Morgan blames Burnaby road crews for rupturing its pipe they may be right.
On the flip side of this greasy coin the road crew believes the pipeline was improperly marked. Finding the truth may be more difficult than catching a greased pig at the county fair.
In an explosion November 9, 2004 that killed 5 people and seriously injured 4 others Kinder Morgan was found to have not marked the pipeline properly and was fined $140,000 for their part in the accident. Cal/OSHA found the accident to have been completely preventable.
Indeed if history is repeating itself the pipe broken in Burnaby may not have been properly marked. Interestingly enough one of the arguments for Kinder Morgan to be approved to take over Terasen Inc. inspite of a less than stellar safety record was that the same people maintaining the pipes would still be maintaining them after the sale.
Terasen pipes were transporting natural gas, and propane to about 900,000 customers in British Columbia when in February the company announced it would sell Terasen Inc. to Fortis Inc. for 3.2 billion US, and assumed debt taking Kinder Morgan out of the retail business.
If all of this is putting you to sleep here is where you’ll want to get an extra cup of coffee.
In an interview by Martin Rosenberg, EnergyBizOnline, Scott Parker of Kinder Morgan “Kinder Morgans Pipe” Scott Parker gets it done we learn that 1 week after Enron’s Key Ley was convicted of fraud and conspiracy Richard Kinder announced that he would take Kinder Morgan private in a 13.5 billion dollar deal.
Richard Kinder formed Kinder Morgan in 1997 with $40 million worth of pipeline assets that Ken Lay had unloaded. Kinder jumped the Enron ship’s CEO position in 1996.
Parker says in the interview “Rich Kinder is a very smart individual…our company was in a position to be on very sound footing when Enron’s problems surfaced and the trouble occurred in the industry.”
Very smart indeed. However the pipe that was ruptured by a work crew in Burnaby on tuesday has been in operation since 1953, long before it was a Kinder Morgan pipe.
It’s current capacity prior to the break was 225,000 barrels of crude oil per day and is Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline. That’s some pretty old pipe. The records as to where that pipe was buried may certainly have been lost or corrupted over that many years. It would have seemed prudent for Kinder Morgan to aquire accurate maps and records at the time of purchasing the pipe though.
Mother Jones reports Richard Kinder and his wife Nancy served as regional co-chairs for George Bush’s Presidential Exploratory Committee and that Kinder pledged to give the Bush campaign at least $100,000.00. WHOOwah!
Scott Parker says in the EnergyBizOnline interview “Everything we do is buried. It, (The Rockies Express) will have a minimum of a 3-foot cover, so agriculture can occur over the pipe.
As far as I know most places require that a dead human body must be buried at a 6 foot depth. The big question today may be:
Who decided a dead body was 2 times more dangerous to the environment than a pipe traveling thousands of miles across a nation, carrying thousands of barrels of crude oil per day to the environment?
Labels: Burnaby, Canada, Kinder Morgan, Pipeline, oil spill
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Breaking news: Kinder Morgan Pipe Breaks, Again.
