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Temporary pipeline restart under wayCAREFULLY: Some will be allowed to spill to prevent total shutdown of Prudhoe operations.
By LISA DEMER - Anchorage Daily News
January 11th, 2011
... As temperatures dropped at Prudhoe Bay and the shutdown of the 800-mile pipeline continued Tuesday, federal and state regulators agreed to allow Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. to temporarily restart the flow of oil even though some will ooze out of a leaking secondary pipe.
The flow of oil back into the pipeline was to resume Tuesday night, said Alyeska spokeswoman Michelle Egan.
That was expected to raise the temperature of oil in pipelines and tanks, avoid a more complex cold restart, avoid expected problems with freezing and wax buildup and allow North Slope operators to resume higher levels of production, Alyeska said.
"We are in the middle of the restart process. We are opening valves," Egan said around 8:30 p.m. The pipeline was shut down for more than 80 hours, the second-longest period in the pipeline's 33-year history.
STORAGE TANKS FILLINGAlyeska, which operates the pipeline that delivers oil from the North Slope to Valdez, has been grappling with a dead-of-winter shutdown since Saturday.
Risks of freezing pipelines and equipment increase the longer the flow is cut off, federal and state officials say. The shutdown has cost the state of Alaska more than $18 million a day in oil royalties and taxes.
Alyeska cut off the flow of crude to the pipeline just before 9 a.m. Saturday after workers discovered oil leaking from a pipe into the basement of a pump building at Pump Station 1 near Prudhoe Bay.
Oil field operators were directed to cut production to 5 percent of normal, or about 30,000 barrels a day. The limited amount of oil has been stored in two holding tanks at the pump station.
But the two tanks, which together hold only two-thirds of the 630,000 barrels produced on a normal day, were filling up. They'd be at capacity before the damaged area could be sealed off and a new 157-foot bypass line is built, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Just fabricating the new piping in Fairbanks is expected to take several more days, DEC said.
If the tanks reached their capacity, all North Slope production would have to be shut down, risking cold weather damage to wells and pipes, as well as the trans-Alaska pipeline itself, according to DEC.
As of Tuesday, the temperature of oil in the pipeline was 32 degrees in places and expected to drop a couple of degrees a day.
Asked whether water in the lines already was freezing, Egan said, "I think trying to restart today was to avoid that."
RISKS OF A RESTARTSo far, 48 barrels or 2,000 gallons of oil has been recovered from the pump building.
The temporary restart will pump oil through damaged underground piping connected to the building, which may cause more leaking in the building, according to the state and federal regulators. So far no oil has been seen on the ground, but with the restart it could spill out of the building onto the soil, the DEC said.
"These kind of things -- especially in these kind of conditions -- there is never anything but difficult decisions," said Mark MacIntyre, a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency working in the command center. "This just happens to be one where we feel like moving forward with that plan will help ultimately address the situation here and get everything back to normal sooner than anything else."
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... Motiva Enterprises plans to return a 180,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) vacuum distillation unit to operation Wednesday ... A 75,000 bpd vacuum unit was back in operation by Monday after restarting over the weekend. ...
by Xenophobe » Tue 11 Jan 2011, 10:42:02 
