By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Aug. 19 -- The cause of an explosion early Thursday at Duke Energy Corp.'s Moss Bluff salt cavern natural gas storage facility in Liberty County, Tex., is under investigation. The Charlotte, NC-based Duke reported that there were no injuries, but a fire in aboveground infrastructure continued to burn throughout the day.
"The fire started at 4:15 a.m. and is still burning," said spokeswoman Gretchen Krueger late Thursday afternoon. "[Firefighting experts] Boots & Coots are on the scene evaluating the situation."
Krueger said the source of the gas was shut off, but gas in piping and other aboveground infrastructure was still feeding the fire, which did not affect the gas in underground storage.
The facility, 40 miles northeast of Houston, has three storage caverns underground with the capacity to store a total of 16 bcf of working gas. It also has interconnections with five major pipelines serving eastern and midwestern US markets. Throughput on the pipelines was not affected, Krueger said, although storage customers were impacted, with no injections or withdrawals possible from one of the caverns while the facilities remained aflame. The other two caverns did not appear to be threatened.
The extent of damage to the facility has not yet been assessed, Krueger said.