Industry Problems and Community Recap

Hello fellow bloggers. This will be my last blog post on thenaturalgas ALTERNATIVE because the semester has come to an end. I would like to take this time to recap the blogs I wrote throughout the blog.

My first blog post was Cabot Oil & Gas and Chesapeake Energy. In this post I highlighted what Cabot and Chesapeake have been doing in their local communities.

Cabot Oil & Gas is a leading partner with Endless Mountains Health Systems in a $45 million hospital project in Montrose.  They started off the project with a $1 million leadership gift to get the project underway.

Chesapeake Energy is working with their local United Way and has become the first-ever corporate sponsor for their communities united way 2013 campaign. They have also been extremely helpful with the flood recovery efforts in Bradford County.

My next blog post was Wastewater and Casella Waste Systems. In this post I highlighted a major problem in the natural gas industry, wastewater.

Wastewater is the left over water from hydraulic fracturing. The problem with this wastewater is that it can have anywhere for 3 to 12 additive chemicals used for fracking in them.  Potentially this water could be treated at a plant so that it may be used in the future and the is what Casella Waste Systems has been doing. The landfills that Casella Waste Systems sends the wastewater to have a gas collection system they use to collect extra gas in the water and to produce energy for their plants.

My next blog was Natural Gas Pipelines and Bake Hughes. In this blog I highlighted some problems that companies are having with their natural gas pipelines. These problems have caused deaths in the apst but luckily Baker Hughes designed GEOPIGs that are high-resolution caliper in-line inspection services. These PIGs are sent through the pipeline and scan for any weak points they can find.

My last blog was Giving Back to the Community. In this blog I wrote about natural gas companies that are giving back to their communities.

Columbia Gas of Virginia has donated over $3000 to a variety of non-profit organizations in their communities. Virginia Gas has been partnering with their local Salvation Army’s Energy Share program as well as with their local Special Olympics. Briggy Bandz donates between $1 to 40% of each Bandz sold to many non-profit organizations.

I hope you enjoyed reading my posts and don’t forget to check out the other posts by my group members!

Natural Gas Pipelines and Baker Hughes

The natural gas industry uses natural gas pipelines to transport natural gas around the country. In the US alone there is a highly integrated transmission and distribution grid that can transport natural gas to and from nearly any location in the lower 48 states.

For natural gas to be able to be transported to almost any location in the lower 48 states there are 305,000 miles of interstate and intrastate pipelines that are needed. There are over 210 different natural gas pipeline systems that make up these 305,000 miles. 400 underground natural gas storage facilities store the natural gas, while there are more than 11,00 delivery points, 5,000 receipt points, 1,400 interconnection points, and 24 hubs or market centers that provide a way to get the natural gas to the consumers.

Pipelines are the best way to transport natural gas in this day and age, but there are several problems that these pipelines and pipeline companies can cause. To start with, under a federal law known as the natural gas act, companies have the right to exercise eminent domain so it can condemn private property for constructing and maintaining the pipeline. If the company chooses your private land as some of the land it wants to use all you can do is live with it or move away.

This doesn’t sound like a big problem to most people, but serious problems with the pipelines are that there is a constant risk of accidents, spills, and explosions. In the past few years, there have been many large pipeline failures that led to massive damage and even loss of live.

In September 2010, a natural gas pipeline explosion of San Bruno, California killed eight people. Once the National Transportation Safety Board had time to investigate the case they found “troubling revelations… about a company that exploited weakness in a lax system of oversight and government agencies that placed a blind trust in operators to the detriment of public safety.”

Luckily companies like Baker Hughes have created the GEOPIG high-resolution caliper in-line inspection service. These PIGs are intelligent robotic devices that are propelled down the pipelines to evaluate the interior of the pipeline. These PIGs can test pipe thickness, pipe roundness, check for signs of corrosion, detect minute leaks, and any other defects along the interior of the pipeline.

Although it is great that companies like Baker Hughes have created these PIGS that are making pipelines much safer, they have not solved all of the problems for the natural gas pipelines. It will be interesting to see how increase use of natural gas will affect these pipelines and the safety hazards that go along with them.

Natural Gas Pipelines by Region: