Enbridge pipeline to remain shut down in Kentucky through Monday

The Enbridge pipeline that exploded last week in Kentucky will be closed through at least Monday, company officials said.

The section of Enbridge’s Texas Eastern pipeline that exploded Aug. 2 resulted in the death of one person and injuries to at least five others. Enbridge Inc. is a Canadian multinational energy transportation company located in Calgary, Alberta.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has assumed control of the incident site in Kentucky, and Enbridge officials said the company is supporting the investigation.

Enbridge pipeline:
3rd blast in a year

The Enbridge pipeline explosion, which occurred near Danville, was the second  this year on the Texas Eastern pipeline system. An explosion in Ohio in January injured at least two people.

It was also the third big blast for Enbridge in less than a year after an explosion in British Columbia on its Westcoast system last October.

The Enbridge pipeline that exploded last week in Kentucky will be closed through at least Monday. The section of Enbridge’s Texas Eastern pipeline that exploded Aug. 2 resulted in the death of one person and injuries to at least five others. Enbridge Inc. is a Canadian multinational energy transportation company located in Calgary, Alberta.

Enbridge pipeline:
What happened

According to the report in the Louisville Courier Journal the next day, the Enbridge pipeline explosion unleashed a giant ball of “sheer heat” that killed 58-year-old Lisa D. Derringer, and sent her neighbors fleeing in panic.

Jodie Coulter, a neighbor of Derringer’s who was one of the five people injured in the explosion, said: “I could feel it as we were running from the house. I could feel it, like if you had your hand in an oven.”

The flames, which destroyed Coulter’s Lincoln County home, reached as high as 300 feet – as tall as the Statue of Liberty.

Enbridge pipeline:
Pre-explosion concerns

Coulter said she contacted Enbridge to report concerns she had about the pipeline in the days before the blast. Coulter, whose mobile home was about 200 feet from the rupture, said she felt the ground shake twice before the blast. The two episodes were brief, she said, but the shaking was strong enough to knock pictures off walls.

The explosion and fire destroyed five homes and damaged four others in the Indian Camp mobile home park. The flames could be seen throughout Lincoln County, and smoke from the incident could be seen as far away as Louisville, 70 miles to the northwest.

At the time of the blast, about 1.7 billion cubic feet of gas (bcfd) were flowing south from the Marcellus and Utica shale in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia through the damaged section of pipe toward the Gulf Coast, according to data from analytics firm Refinitiv. That represents about 2 percent of the 90 bcfd of all the gas produced in the lower 48 states. One billion cubic feet of gas is enough to supply about five million U.S. homes for a day.

After the blast, producers in Appalachia briefly reduced output to 31.8 bcfd from a record high of 32.6 bcfd earlier in the week, according to Refinitiv data. Enbridge has since boosted production to new high of 32.7 bcfd.