Documents provide timeline for natural gas outage in Charleston's West Side - WCHS
Documents provide timeline for natural gas outage in Charleston's West Side | WCHS
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — Documents filed with state regulators now provide some clarity in what went wrong during a massive natural gas outage in Charleston last month.
There are still a handful of people feeling the impact of the Nov. 10 incident that knocked out natural gas service to 1,500 customers in Charleston's West Side when a water main broke. Issues continued for weeks as gas lines were repaired and damaged water heaters, stoves and furnaces were replaced.
The Public Service Commission is conducting a probe into the outage along with the response and responsibility of both the West Virginia American Water Company and Mountaineer Gas. Recent filings with the PSC provided some answers.
The water company's timeline shows its daily leak detection system found no problems 12 hours before the leak near Madison and Beatrice was obvious on the surface at 1:50 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 10.
The gas company timeline shows a report of lost gas service on nearby Sixth Avenue about 45 minutes later. Gas crews started seeing water pouring from meters about half hour after that.
The first communication between the utilities came about 3:50 p.m. when the gas company called the water treatment plant to report the incident. A water field service representative arrived on site at 4:30 a.m. and confirmed the leak gas crews had determined the line couldn’t be fixed until the water company stopped its leak.
Mountaineer Gas senior vice president Moses Skaff spoke with Eyewitness News about the outage.
“They did that by the force of the water coming out of their high-pressure line," Skaff explained. "Those lines are generally packed with gravel and sand. It essentially created almost like a sand-blasting type of effect into our line."
The water company filing notes fixes were delayed because its valves were paved over and could not be located on Florida Street. It took two hours to contact 811 to ensure crews would avoid causing damage to underground infrastructure.
The flow of water was slowed enough to dig and make repairs by 4:30 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 11. By 5:19 a.m., the water line was fixed and the gas line was patched four minutes later, about 15 hours since the leak was spotted.
With 46 miles of gas service lines flooded, Charleston's West Side was just seeing the beginning of its troubles.
Several civil suits are on the table with both utilities coming under fire. Mountaineer Gas has filed legal action against West Virginia American Water.
Related Knowledge Center: Liquefied natural gas
Driven by plentiful natural gas produced from shale plays, the United States began exporting liquefied natural gas in 2016 when the Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana opened and shipped its first cargo. Since then, additional capacity, or trains, have been added to Sabine Pass, and terminals have become operational in Cameron Parish, La.; Hackberry, La.; Cove Point, Md.; and Corpus Christi, Texas. The Energy Information Administration projects that U.S. LNG export capacity will reach 8.9 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) by the end of 2019, making it the third largest in the world, behind Australia and Qatar. The tariff war with China has the potential to impact some final investment decisions for additional terminals in the coming months.