AS AN EXAMPLE of the fall-out from the Bellingham pipeline case, residents of South Seattle in Washington State, USA, are showing increasing concerned about a pipeline running through their neighbourhood. In a town hall meeting at the end of July, around 150 inhabitants urged the city’s mayor, Greg Nickels, to continue his fight for more stringent testing of the fuel pipeline that runs through the area.
The city’s officials have already said that they will shut down the Seattle-based Olympic Pipe Line Co spur unless the company agrees to perform a hydrostatic test; Olympic wants to use cheaper intelligent pigs to assess the line’s fitness-for-purpose. At the meeting, the mayor is reported to have repeated his threat to close down the pipeline by 26 August unless the hydrotest is completed, as well as demanding that the company carries out excavations around the sites of two alleged pipeline abnormalities.
Olympic’s officials have assured the mayor that the pipeline is secure, and have now also filed a federal court case to stop any closure. The company argues that it has conducted numerous tests guaranteeing the pipeline’s safety, and that the pipe section in question, which runs from Redmond to Harbor Island through the south of Seattle, is an interstate line regulated by the federal Office of Pipeline Safety. Federal officials agree, and say there is no need for the hydrostatic testing. What’s more, they are also reported to have pointed out that the town has no real authority to shut down the pipeline’s Seattle spur, which was laid in 1965. It carries jet fuel, gasoline, and diesel, and currently transports about 9 million gallons of fuel per week. The city estimates a hydrostatic test would cost Olympic between $75,000 and $120,000.
The last franchise agreement between Olympic and the city lapsed in 2000. As the parties were set to renegotiate the deal, the company filed for bankruptcy. Mayor Nickels then demanded that the pipeline’s new owners, BP Pipelines North America and Shell Pipelines, conduct hydrostatic tests.