PG&E releases list of 100 riskiest natural gas pipelines

[Land Shark]

Source: Contra Costa Times


PG&E today disclosed its internal list of its 100 highest risk natural gas pipelines in the Bay Area in a move the utility said was aimed at restoring public trust after a deadly San Bruno pipeline explosion.

The pipe segment that exploded was not on the list of the highest risk pipelines.

Utility officials said the list is prepared annually to determine priorities on monitoring, replacing and maintaining the 20,000 segments within 6,700 miles of natural gas pipelines. Making the list does not mean there is an imminent danger of explosion, utility officials said.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_16126275

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The title of the OP (from the Contra Costa Times) is somewhat misleading because in their materials, PG&E is careful to parse words and make (subtly) clear that they, as always, consider lists and even funded requests from the PUC to be merely advisory, and they literally reserve the right and discretion to spend funds intended for the San Bruno pipeline, somewhere else - and they don't say where.

That's what happened with a segment just north of the San Bruno section, which was ID'd as one of the 100 "riskiest" and funded for several million dollars around 2007, and it still hasn't been repaired.

PG&E gets a government guaranteed shareholder return of over 11% - more than the national average - and the whole idea is the trade-off of "accepting regulation" in exchange for guaranteed return at 11.5%. Only problem is, there's no financial regulation, and the rest of the regulations are hardly burdensome in light of government guaranteed profits.

See the interactive map here, and you can click on squares near your interests to get more info about what they are studying or looking forward to looking at (not "repairing"): http://www.pge.com/myhome/customerservice/response/pipelinemaintenance/

The full report is here: http://www.pge.com/includes/docs/pdfs/myhome/customerservice/response/planning_segments.pdf

And pics of the two maps that are interactive two links above are below, for your convenience:

[Ian David]

1. They forgot the hot gas piped out of the Excellence in Broadcasting Network...

... whose logo, btw, looks very much like the number 88, which is used as a neo-nazi slogan.




He's a Nazi - Rush Limbaugh in his own voice!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbZNnrIBcbE&has_verified=1

[bergie321]

2. So there is a list of the top 100 most at-risk pipelines

And the one that exploded didn't make the list?

Is that supposed to comfort people?

[CreekDog]

8. it's worse...the section just north, which i'm 600 feet from was rated "unacceptably high risk"

in 2007. there was a rate increase to replace it, but it was never done.

and now it's not even on the list.

HATE, PG&E.

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. I would have a hard time sleeping under those circumstances.

Used to live a few...very few..miles up from you, glad I am not there anymore.
Of course, we have gas lines running all under our neighborhood here in Ala.
A neighborhood that was built in 1960.

[CreekDog]

10. The only thing that spooks me now are lots of sirens

I've never in my life heard as many sirens, planes and helicopters as that evening. It didn't rattle me, the firefighting planes overhead were something to see.

But I noticed afterwards when I heard a few sirens at once I could feel my heart rate really going up.

And then the next morning there was some sort of gas line explosion in SF near where I work so I stayed out of SF until I'd heard it was taken care of. A little spooked I guess, after all.

But I have several friends that were just a few blocks away, though they didn't all see what was going on because, kind of hard to describe that neighborhood, but it's in a depression, so even a few blocks away, thanks to trees and a hillside, it wasn't very visible to them and their power went out. A friend who was a few blocks away was asking me to turn on my tv and tell him how close the fire was to his house so he could figure out whether he should leave or not. He was about 5 blocks away from it.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. One of the reasons we moved out of So. SF a few years after 9-11

was because every time I looked at the TransAmerica Tower I felt nauseated sick and very anxious.
Not like me at all, at the time.
Couple of weeks of constant tv re-runs of 9-11 videos all over the tv news really seared images in my head.

So yeah, I totally get why sirens would make you feel that way.

edited out the complete gibberish of spelling. Most of it, anyhow.

[Land Shark]

13. Thanks for relating this story. nt

[Downwinder]

3. Do PG&E's Political efforts come out of their 11.5%? Or do they get

an 11.5% profit on that too?

[2 Much Tribulation]

6. IBy right, profits can be reduced for good cause, in practice it's rarely tried, so, in experience

then, it's as if they get their statutory profit rate no matter how evil they act. So, lo and behold, what happens when there's no management of an in human emotion-less corporation?

[Downwinder]

7. So they make an 11.5% profit on the San Bruno fire? n/t

[CreekDog]

11. I think the way natural gas is regulated, they aren't allowed that big a profit on it

i think PG&E can only make unlimited profits off electricity.

[Starry Messenger]

4. k & r

[McCamy Taylor]

5. Huh? Are they trying to fix real estate prices? If you call them risky without repairing them

then home values on the bad pipelines will plummet and people will lose their fire insurance.

I think they are doing this for real estate developers and insurers not home owners.