Former U.S. Energy Regulator Brigham A. McCown Says the Anniversary of JJ’s Restaurant Explosion Highlights Need for Higher Standards
“The natural gas explosion that leveled the popular JJ’s Restaurant a year ago this month was completely preventable. It is a perfect example of how using out-of-date practices in utility line marking and locating for construction excavation can lead to avertible tragedy. Mistakes like this are not only preventable, they are in fact inexcusable, given the readily availability state-of-the art technologies designed to help avoid these kinds of disasters.
One would hope that safety should always take priority in policymaking. Most injuries in the infrastructure industry are the unintended consequences of individual actions in a risky environment, but in this case, the final consequences were so much greater due to industry standards being set too low. The professionals tasked with locating utility lines must ensure that excavations avoid hitting those lines. When that doesn’t happen, the results can be catastrophic. In the case of JJ’s, the cost was one persons tragic death and the injuries of 15 others.
Obama’s energy secretary just backed building more oil pipelines
Moniz told Capital New York that the country’s railroad infrastructure was not ready to handle to huge increase in oil production coming out of places like North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation. Moniz added that there needed to be more pipelines to get the oil to market.
Final numbers were released yesterday for North Dakota’s oil production in 2013, and the chart above helps tell the story of the phenomenal rise of oil production in the Peace Garden State over the last several years. Here are some details:
1. North Dakota oil drillers pumped a record amount of crude oil in 2013 – 313.5 million barrels – which was 29% above the previous annual production record set in 2012. Even more remarkably, oil output last year was more than double the 153 million barrels produced two years ago in 2011.
Majority of Americans Think Keystone Would Benefit U.S.
The poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, and surveyed 1,004 adults ages 18 or older, also indicated that only 35 percent believe construction of the pipeline would be harmful to the environment.
The oil-sands pipeline, which would transport crude from Alberta, Canada, to Gulf Coast refineries, is being reviewed at the State Department, which is expected to release its final environmental-impact assessment of the project shortly.
U.S. Senate officially starts national conversation on crude oil exports
On January 30, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held an historic hearing on whether the U.S. Government should relax the general ban on crude oil exports which it has had since 1975 and has never seriously reconsidered since. Crude oil exports are currently generally prohibited except to Canada and where the oil has transited the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.