Canada gives preliminary OK for new pipeline

The Canadian government said it conditionally approved plans by a division of TransCanada to expand natural gas pipeline capacity in the country’s west. The National Energy Board announced it approved of three natural gas loops in northeastern British Columbia and northwestern Alberta. The 69-mile loops make up the so-called Northwest Mainline Expansion Project submitted by [...]

PG&E Proposes Spending $769M To Test Gas Pipelines, $2.2B Overall

PG&E Corp. (PCG) on Friday proposed spending $769 million over three years to test its natural gas pipelines as part of a $2.2 billion pipeline safety program, following a deadly pipeline explosion last year. PG&E said it will pressure-test all of its untested pipe segments and expand use of automated pipeline shut-off valves. The utility [...]

BP Ducks Investor Suit for Prudhoe Bay Spill

(CN) – The 9th Circuit on Wednesday dismissed a securities-fraud complaint against BP Exploration related to the oil company’s 2007 conviction for negligently discharging oil into Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay. This decision from the federal appeals court in Seattle unanimously reverses a federal judge’s finding that BP’s contractual filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [...]

Mike Feuer Calls Upon Public Utilities Commission to Provide Gas Pipeline Safety Information

Feuer Requests Answers to Concerns Raised by Investigation of San Bruno Pipeline Rupture. Assembly Member Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) has asked the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to provide information about the safety of gas pipelines in Feuer’s district after a devastating explosion in San Bruno, California raised questions about the safety of aging pipeline [...]

Rainbow Pipeline outage extended to end of June

Plains Midstream continues integrity work on oil line in northern Alberta Follow-up article from a recent MATCOR Blog Posting: A pipeline which caused the largest oil spill in Alberta since the 1980s likely will remain out of service until the end of June, said operator Plains All American Pipeline. The parent of operator Plains Midstream [...]

TransCanada reopens Keystone oil pipeline

There were no concerns about the integrity of the 1,300-mile Keystone oil  pipeline following a May 29 spill in Kansas, the U.S. government said. Canadian pipeline company TransCanada restarted the Keystone oil pipeline  during the weekend. The Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous  Materials Safety Administration issued a corrective action prohibiting a restart  last week [...]

San Diego utilities step up scrutiny of pipelines & pipeline integrity

San Diego’s two gas utilities will be stepping up their safety inspections of natural gas distribution lines and making upgrades to a transmission line, a utility executive said Wednesday. The safety of natural gas pipelines received intense scrutiny after a pipeline explosion in September killed 8 people and destroyed 37 homes in the San Francisco suburb of [...]

AC-Induced Corrosion – It’s a Real Threat

Pipeline operators beware: AC-induced corrosion is threatening your newer pipelines. This is the finding from numerous pipeline integrity investigators whether it be smart pig indications or direct assessment evaluations.  Astoundingly, pipelines with outstanding coating and cathodic protection systems are showing evidence of AC corrosion – and in some cases, quite severe. In the United States [...]

Oil seep shuts down Trans Mountain pipeline to B.C.

Oil found near Kinder Morgan line west of Edmonton EDMONTON – Kinder Morgan plans to reopen a portion of its Trans Mountain pipeline after wrestling with a problem spot along the route about 150 kilometres west of Edmonton. The company shut down the 1,150-kilometre pipeline on Friday after its control centre received a call from [...]

The MATCOR team Welcomes Corrosion Technician, Gary Streit.

Doylestown, PA (April 25) MATCOR, Inc., a full service provider of global provider of corrosion and cathodic protection products, engineering, systems and solutions announced another addition to the MATCOR corrosion operations team, Gary Streit. Streit will join the highly regarded and professional MATCOR corrosion and pipeline integrity team, based at the Houston, TX field office. Streit [...]