Environmentalism transported

Nov. 26, 2001
Since the oil boom busted in 1982, the world's oil and gas industries have had to learn how to find, drill, produce, and move hydrocarbons in the face of nearly constant opposition from economics and environmentalism.

Since the oil boom busted in 1982, the world's oil and gas industries have had to learn how to find, drill, produce, and move hydrocarbons in the face of nearly constant opposition from economics and environmentalism.

Thus, the lead article (p. 60) in this issue's Pipeline Report summarizes some of the most important recent technology advances in the pipeline industry.

Some have helped the pipeline industry improve its economics, such as higher-strength steels that allow thinner walls with even higher internal pressures, automatic welding that improves weld quality while accelerating lay rates, and sophisticated leak-detection and monitoring that allow industry to ensure its systems remain the safest means for moving oil and gas.

Two projects currently under way and an unrelated regulatory controversy illustrate what those in the petroleum and natural gas transportation industries face.

In South America, a second large crude oil pipeline is being laid in Ecuador. In North America, a major natural gas line is being installed across the eastern part of the US Gulf of Mexico. Also in the US, the world's tanker industry is fighting the effects of slipshod, ill-considered energy regulation.

Orchids, sponges

OCP Ecuador SA began last summer building the $1.2 billion, 450,000 b/d, 500-km Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados pipeline to double crude oil movement capacity in a country that badly needs the economic boost.

Except for a 100-km deviation north of Quito, OCP follows the route of another crude oil pipeline. But that deviation hit rocky terrain earlier this year with its plans to go near the town of Mindo, an eco-tourism site. Planners chose the route to avoid seismic risks and populated areas, said operator and major partner Alberta Energy Co.

Mindo lies on the western slopes of the Pichincha volcano, a top bird-watching area and home to 275 types of orchids, a host of butterflies, and other rare flora and fauna.

Installation and controversy continue in Ecuador as builders try to reduce the footprint of construction while environmentalists do what they do best: obstruct and delay.

In the US, the $1.6 billion, 753-mile Gulfstream Natural Gas System is being installed across a part of the gulf that has seen relatively little oil and gas development. The pipeline will deliver up to 1.1 bcfd of natural gas to Florida electric power generators.

The project has advanced with relative speed and ease, given its magnitude, but not without environmental controversy. The latest surfaced earlier this year with the charge that installation would irrevocably damage the "hard-bottom" seabed, disrupting limestone ridges and niches that shelter corals, sponges, shrimp, worms, and starfish.

The US Environmental Protection Agency said the damage would be "essentially unmitigatable."

To address concerns, operator Williams Cos. Inc. agreed to modify the route, adding to the cost of the project but ensuring its completion.

Phantom leaks

But resolution of another controversy is less sure. By Nov. 30, written comments are due to the US Coast Guard in a controversy spawned by the 1990 Oil Pollution Act. That law directed the Coast Guard to determine technical standards and use requirements for devices that would monitor tank pressures or cargo levels in single-hull tankers.

In 1995, the Coast Guard proposed a performance standard for leak-detection devices of the lesser of 0.5% of the loaded cargo or 1,000 gal. In 1997, the agency asked manufacturers to submit devices that could meet that sensitivity criterion. None did so.

Environmentalists, however, would not let the matter rest, and on Nov. 6, the Coast Guard issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to monitor levels of pressure in the cargo tanks of oil tankers and thus monitor continuously any oil leaks through pits or cracks on the single-hull tanker's structure.

Measuring minute leaks from massive vessels running through fluid environments is the task faced by the tanking industry, if this rule eventually takes effect.

Today's reality

There may remain some in industry who remember before the 1980s, when environmental concerns such as these would have been smirked at and ignored.

That irresponsibility led to a public skepticism about oil and gas operations that industry may never overcome, despite current widespread corporate policies that dictate projects large and small budget for environmental protection and mitigation.

The tension between corporate capital plans and environmental demands is now an accepted reality of oil and gas transportation project planning. And that acceptance is in part a measure of industry's maturing attitudes about its public responsibilities.