Longhorn Pipeline reneges on mitigation
It’s been a bad idea from the beginning: take a 50-year old (now 55) abandoned oil pipeline and convert it to carry gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel in the opposite direction. Since the startup of the Longhorn Pipeline in January, it apparently has not been profitable enough for the owners to carry out the required mitigation to make it safe, so they are asking for an “indefinite delay” of the internal inspection of the line - known as a “smart-pig” inspection.
Longhorn Partners Pipeline L.P. has requested that the Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) change the requirements of the Longhorn Mitigation Plan because they are unable to keep product flowing in it long enough to perform the inspection. A smart-pig is an electronic device that is inserted into the pipe and records information as it travels through. It can detect potential problems in the pipe walls such as cracks and corrosion. The City of Austin and U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett are asking OPS to deny the request.
The last smart-pig inspection that was done on the line was in 1995 by the previous owners of the line, ExxonMobil. That inspection found over 4,000 anomalies, or places in the line that could potentially be a problem but needed further inspection.
According to In Fact Daily, Longhorn “performed an in-line inspection on 34 miles of the pipeline in the Houston area during the commission process last fall. However, when it was retrieved from the pipeline, the smart pig’s vendor concluded that the device had accumulated iron-based particulates on the tool sensors, which compromised data for the final three miles of the test.”
The line has been the subject of intense opposition and lawsuits from the City of Austin and other organizations and individuals because of the risk that it creates by pumping explosive fuels through neighborhoods, parks, and environmentally sensitive watersheds. A Federal court ruled in 2002 that the pipeline could proceed, provided they met all the mitigation requirements. An internal inspection within 3 months of startup was one of those requirements.
There is no way to know the true condition of the Longhorn Pipeline until the internal inspection is done, leaving a gaping hole in the safety and security of all those in its path.
You can read the City’s letter to OPS here, and find out more history on the Longhorn Pipeline, including photos of what a 50-year old pipeline looks like and news footage of when it exploded in Houston on our Longhorn Pipeline information page.