Three killed by explosion on natural gas pipeline in Russia.

Three workers carrying out maintenance work on a gas pipeline in the Russian Republic of Chuvashia have been killed in an explosion that took place on Tuesday 20 December 2022. A fourth person, described as their driver, is being treated for shock. The explosion produced a fire described as two stories high, but this was quickly extinguished by cutting the gas supply to the pipeline.

Fire caused by an explosion on a gas pipeline in the Russian Republic of Chuvashia, seen from the village of Yambakhtino. Moscow Times.

The explosion occurred on a section of the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhhorod Pipeline, which is operated by the Russian state-controlled natural gas company Gazprom, and which supplies gas from the Yamburg Gas Field in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, within the West Siberian Arctic Circle, to the Uzhhorod Pumping Station in Western Ukraine, and then on to Central and Western Europe. The explosion interrupted the supply of gas temporarily, but this was quickly restored by switching to a parallel section of pipeline.

The aftermath of an explosion on the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhhorod Pipeline in the Russian Republic of Chuvashia on 20 December 2022. Ministry of Emergency Situations/AP.

The Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhhorod Pipeline is currently the only pipeline supplying natural gas to Western Europe from Russia; the Nordstream 1 pipeline which ran beneath the Baltic Sea to Germany was shut off by Russian authorities in August, citing equipment problems, although this has widely been interpreted as a response to Germany providing weapons, equipment and training to Ukraine following the Russian invasion of that country in February this year. A second Baltic pipeline, Nordstream 2, was never brought into service, after Germany withdrew support for the project in protest at the invasion of Ukraine. A section of both pipelines beneath the Baltic was destroyed by an explosion in September, with Swedish investigators subsequently finding traces of explosives at the site, although who blew it up, and why, remains unclear.

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Divers looking for source of oil spill find broken pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico.

Divers searching for the source of an oil slick that appeared on the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Hurricane Ida have found three broken pipelines on the seabed to the south of the city of New Orleans. The oil was first observed on Wednesday 1 September by an aerial survey caried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with additional footage being taken from a helicopter chartered by the Associated Press the next day. This prompted a clean-up operation by Talos Energy, who previously leased  Bay Marchand, Block 5, the area where the slick appeared, and Clean Gulf Associates,  a nonprofit oil-spill response cooperative hired by Talos to help with the operation. Now divers from Clean Gulf have identified a broken 30 cm diameter pipeline with oil leaking from it, plus two further broken 10 cm pipelines, which are not currently leaking, but which may have contributed to the spill. Talos Energy do not believe that these pipelines were part of their operation, as their records show all seabed pipelines operated by the company were removed when their activities ceased in 2017. If this is correct, then it is unclear who the pipelines belonged to.

 

Satellite image showing an oil slick to the south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana, on 2 September 2021. Maxar Technologies/AP.

Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday 29 August 2021, and bringing with it high winds and flooding which led to more than 50 deaths on the eastern United States.  However, the fact that the death toll was not much higher has been hailed as a vindication of the billions of dollars that have been invested in the levee system protecting the city of New Orleans following the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Katrina sixteen years ago. The city, which was directly in the path of the storm, suffered wind damage as it was battered by 240 km per hour winds, but only a limited amount of flooding. A plan to evacuate large parts of New Orleans in the event of it being hit by another major hurricane was not put into place because of the rapidity with which the storm formed, developing over the Caribbean Sea only four days before making landfall as the fifth largest storm ever to hit the US coast.

The storm also caused flooding at the Phillips 66 Alliance Refinery, which is beside the Mississippi River to the south of New Orleans, where a sheen has subsequently been observed on the water, implying that some leaking has occurred here to, although the refinery was shut down ahead of the storm, which should have prevented any major incident.

Tropical storms, known as hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, are caused by solar energy heating the air above the oceans, which causes the air to rise leading to an inrush of air. If this happens over a large enough area the inrushing air will start to circulate, as the rotation of the Earth causes the winds closer to the equator to move eastwards compared to those further away (the Coriolis Effect). This leads to tropical storms rotating clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere. These storms tend to grow in strength as they move across the ocean and lose it as they pass over land (this is not completely true: many tropical storms peter out without reaching land due to wider atmospheric patterns), since the land tends to absorb solar energy while the sea reflects it.

 

The formation of a tropical cyclone. Natural Disaster Management.

Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms.

 

The formation and impact of a storm surge. eSchoolToday.

Many officials in the US, including President Joe Biden, have linked Hurricane Ida directly to global warming, noting that the average storm hitting the US today does seven times as much damage as in the 1970s, that 'hundred year' storms now happen several times a decade, and that states formerly to the north of the hurricane zone are now regularly hit by these storms.

Oil spills are potentially harmful to marine life in a variety of ways. Most obviously it can coat the outside of organisms, causing damage to external structures such as the feathers of Birds and fur of Mammals, as well as smothering many marine invertebrates and plants. It also contains a variety of chemicals which can be directly toxic upset the hormonal balance of many animals. Oil also impedes the feeding of marine organisms, coating both food and feeding organs, but provides an excellent food source for Bacteria, which can lead to Eutrophication events - dramatic increases in Bacteria numbers, which then use all the oxygen in the water, leading other organisms to asphyxiate.

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Ruptured gas pipeline leads to fountain of fire in the Gulf of Mexico.

A fire broke out on the sea surface in the Gulf of Mexico, after a natural gas pipeline ruptured on Friday 2 July 2021. The pipeline, which connected the KU-C satellite platform on the Ku Maloob Zaap Oil Field, ruptured some time before 5.15 am local time, when the leaking gas ignited, with the fire being brought completely under control by 10.30 am. Although dramatic, nobody was hurt during the incident. It is unclear at this time how the pipeline was damaged, or how the leaking gas was subsequently ignited.

 

A fire on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on 2 July 2021, caused by a ruptured natural gas pipeline. Manuel López San Martín/Twitter.

The Ku Maloob Zaap oil field is worked by the Mexican state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), in the Bay of Campeche, off the coast of Tabasco State, on the Yucatan Peninsula. The oil field is actually made up of three separate reserves, the Ku reserve, located in Kimmeridgian (Late Jurassic) deposits, the Maloob, which is in Late Cretaceous-Palaeocene strata, and the Eocene Zaap reserve. The field is worked by seventeen drilling platforms connected by 166 km of pipeline. The field has been worked since the early 1980s, with peak production reached in 2009, when the field was producing more than 130 million litres of oil and over three billion litres of natural gas per day, with production having declined steadily since that time.

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Major oil leek from ruptured pipeline in the Russian Arctic.

Authorities in the Komi Republic in Northwestern Russia have declared an emergency after crude oil was found to be leaking from a pipeline in a remote area close to the border with the Nenets Autonomous District. The leak, on a pipeline operated by Russian oil producer Lukoil, which connects the Oshskoye Oil Field in Nenets to a storage facility in Komi, is believed to have leaked about seven tons of crude oil before the leak was discovered, with three tons spreading out over the Arctic tundra and about four tons entering the Kolva River. The spill was eventually discovered when the oil travelled downstream to the town of Usinsk, tens of kilometres downstream of the original leak.

 

A cleanup operation in Russia's Komi Republic this week, Республика Коми Официальный портал.

Cleaning up the spill is predicted to be very difficult, as the booms which are generally used to contain oil spills on waterways are effectively useless, due to floating ice on the Kolva River, with oil having reached about 30 km downstream of Usinsk. Lukoil is reported to have deployed a team of about 150 workers to tackle the spill, who are reported to be using sorbents (absorbent materials) to try to remove oil from the river.

 

Oil covered ice blocks on the Kolva River. Комитет спасения Печоры/VK.

The Investigative Committee for the Arkhangelsk Region and Nenets Autonomous District has opened a criminal investigation into the spill, which Greenpeace Russia suspects may have been caused by poor maintenance, with metal pipelines, which are slowly corroded by crude oil, being used beyond their due replacement dates.

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Seven dead in pipeline explosion in Lagos, Nigeria.

Seven people have died after a pipeline carrying petrol exploded in Lagos State, Nigeria, on Thursday 5 December 2019. The explosion happened at Idowu Egba to the west of the city of Lagos, and is thought to have been caused by thieves boring into the pipeline to steal petrol, which also released petrol fumes into the local atmosphere, fumes which were ignited when a cleric at a nearby church lit a candle. The dead are thought to include five members of the gang that was stealing the petrol, the clergyman, and one of his parishioners. A second churchgoer is being treated in hospital with 70% burns.

Investigators at the scene of a pipeline explosion in Lagos State, Nigeria, this week. Gidipoint.

Although Nigeria is a major exporter of crude oil, it is largely reliant on imported petroleum for its fuel needs, placing the country at a significant economic disadvantage. The combination of fuel poverty and pipelines criss-crossing the countryside has led to a thriving black market in stolen fuel, obtained at great risk from pipelines, either as processed petroleum or as crude oil which is then refined using home-made fractionation equipment, a process known as 'oil bunkering'. This raiding of oil pipelines is blamed by oil companies for the widespread pollution in the Niger Delta, though environmental and human rights groups claim that this is used as an excuse to cover poor maintenance practises, and that companies should be held responsible for the security of their pipelines anyway.

However the sale of black-market fuel provides a means of gaining hard cash in an area that has seen little benefit from the presence of the oil companies, and where the oil is often seen as a resource that should belong to the local people, not foreign oil companies or the (fairly remote) government of Nigeria. The environmental problems caused by both legal and illegal oil operations in the Delta strongly impact upon the local economy, which is based upon small scale farming and fishing, leaving many people with no legitimate source of income, which combined with a rapidly growing population and therefore increased demand for food, makes the black market oil industry more attractive than it might otherwise seem.

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Leak from Keystone Pipeline causes major pollution incident in North Dakota.

A leak from the Keystone Pipeline has led to about 1.4 million litres of crude oil being released into wetlands in Walsh County, North Dakota. The leak was discovered on Tuesday 29 October 2019, causing pipeline owners TC Energy to shut down that portion of the pipeline while maintenance work is carried out. The leak presents no immediate threat to Human health, according to the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality, as the wetlands where the spill occurred are not used as a source of water for Human consumption, but the impact of the spill on local wildlife is likely to be severe and potentially long lasting.

Oil spill in Walsh County, North Dakota, from a leak on the Keystone Pipeline in October 2019. Taylor DeVries/North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality/AP.

Oil spills are potentially harmful to aquatic life in a variety of ways. Most obviously it can coat the outside of organisms, causing damage to external structures such as the feathers of Birds and fur of Mammals, as well as smothering many aquatic invertebrates and plants. It also contains a variety of chemicals which can be directly toxic upset the hormonal balance of many animals. Oil also impedes the feeding of aquatic organisms, coating both food and feeding organs, but provides an excellent food source for Bacteria, which can lead to Eutrophication events - dramatic increases in Bacteria numbers, which then use all the oxygen in the water, leading other organisms to asphyxiate.

The Keystone Pipeline began operation in 2010 and carries crude oil extracted from oil sands in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin to refineries in Illinois and Texas. The pipeline has suffered a number of similar leaks which have caused alarm among environmental groups, many of whom opposed the construction of the pipeline in the first place. The spills have also served to deepen opposition to the larger Keystone XL Pipeline, which is planned by TC Energy to run through Alberta, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The Keystone XL Pipeline project was blocked by the Obama-administration in 2015 due to concerns about the environmental impact and economic viability of the project, but this block was overturned by the incoming Trump-administration in 2017, though the legality of this is still being challenged in several courts in the US.

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Dozens dead following pipeline explosion in Hidalgo State, Mexico.

Sixty six people have now been confirmed dead and another seventy six are known to have been injured, following an explosion on an oil pipeline in the town of Tlahuelilpan, in Hidalgo State, Mexico on Friday 18 January 2018. The incident was reportedly caused after thieves drilled into the pipeline in a poor neighbourhood of the city with the intention of stealing oil. This resulted in a rupture on the pipeline, which causes oil to jet into the air. Many people then rushed to the scene hoping to fill containers with some of the oil. An attempt to hold back the crowds was made by military personnel, but it soon became clear that they were badly outnumbered, and they were forced to withdraw. Some time after this the oil was somehow ignited and the area engulfed in a fireball.

The aftermath of a pipeline explosion in Tlahuelilpan, Hidalgo, on Friday 18 January 2019. New York Times.

Thefts of oil from pipelines in Mexico have risen almost ninefold in the last decade, driven by growing economic inequality and rising fuel prices. Incoming president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was elected in December, has promised to clamp down on these thefts, deploying military personnel to guard pipelines and shutting down some of the more vulnerable routes completely. However this policy has drawn widespread criticism as it has led to fuel shortages, which appear to have further fed demand for black-market fuel.

Relatives of missing people watching as forensic search teams sift through the aftermath of a pipeline explosion in Tlahuelilpan, Hidalgo, on Friday 18 January 2019. Reuters.

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