The 254 km Young to Lithgow Pipeline is responsible for delivering gas to some of New South Wales’ major population centres. On 2 November 2022, a fault in the pipeline interrupted the gas supply to some 20,000 of Jemena’s customers.
Phil Colvin, Jemena’s Network Operations Manager, talks to The Australian Pipeliner about the complexities of restoring gas supply to its customers, and how the company worked alongside pipeline owner APA Group to achieve this.
He shares how Jemena and APA Group safely and efficiently responded to the outage, from navigating unseasonable weather to coordinating huge numbers of ‘boots on the ground’.
How and when was the issue first detected?
Both Jemena and APA monitor our respective gas distribution and transmission assets 24 hours a day, seven days a week. During ‘Business as Usual’ operations, this enables us to track things like current gas flows, pipeline pressures, and maintenance operations. Our system is designed to alert us when there is an unexpected change in system performance – such as a decrease in pipeline pressure – as was the case on the evening of Wednesday, 2 November. This was the first sign that an incident had occurred on the pipeline and that supply into Jemena’s gas distribution network had been impacted.
What short term risks were associated with the damage to the pipeline?
During an incident involving gas infrastructure the safety of the community is of prime importance. APA Group was able to quickly mobilise to isolate the gas leak and make the area safe. This was a critical step to be taken before any further work was able to commence.
How was Jemena involved in responding to the incident?
While Jemena does not own or operate the Young to Lithgow Pipeline, gas transported via the pipeline enters our gas distribution network and, in turn, is used to supply our customers in Bathurst, Lithgow, Wallerawang, and Oberon.
While we worked to support APA’s restoration efforts where we could, we were principally focussed on reconnecting our customers to the gas network as safely and as quickly as possible.
As a first step, this depended on gas being reintroduced into the Young to Lithgow Pipeline and therefore our gas distribution network. Fortunately, APA was able to reintroduce gas into the portion of the pipeline network servicing Bathurst early on the morning of Thursday, 3 November 2022 – less than a day after the fault was detected. With gas returned to Bathurst, we were able to quickly mobilise to start reconnecting around 13,000 customers across Bathurst.
The reconnection process is quite complex and labour intensive; it involves isolating the affected area, personnel visiting each gas connection to conduct make safe activities, purging gas infrastructure of any remaining air, gas being reintroduced into the system, and finally customers having their gas supply re-lit.
How did you manage the day-to-day operations?
This was a complex operation involving personnel from multiple businesses, as well as significant interest from the community, government, emergency services, media and of course our customers.
Both Jemena and APA were required to manage a number of elements concurrently – from developing and implementing an operational response, to being on the front foot with communications to keep our customers up to date. To do this, both APA and Jemena stood up our emergency management frameworks to help coordinate our responses internally and across our organisations. Each day a meeting of key personnel across the business was held to develop a shared understanding of the current status of the situation, discuss the plan for the day, and identify any risks or concerns. We had a number of other working groups – such as our Crisis Communications Team – who provided coordination around a specific element of the outage.
What challenges were involved in restoring gas supply to the area?
We knew early on that restoring customer gas connections was likely to take a number of weeks, and we were very transparent with setting expectations accordingly, endeavouring to let our customers and the community know that their gas services would likely not be restored until around the start of December.
While we were communicating with our customers, APA was exploring a range of options around how best to restore gas supplies to the area as quickly and safely as possible. Ultimately, APA implemented two temporary solutions to bring gas back to the area promptly.
The first of these was an LNG tanker connected at Wallerawang, while the second was a temporary pipeline fix.
These solutions came on sooner than expected so, with the support of the community, we were able to restore customers much earlier than expected, with the last of our customers being reconnected during the week commencing 14 November 2022.
In addition to these operational hurdles, we faced numerous challenges. While we have a workforce of about 15 people in the region, we knew that, given the sheer size and scale of the event, we would need to quickly mobilise a significant workforce. This came with its own logistical challenges, requiring a team dedicated to keeping our people fed, housed, transported, and rested.
Finally, the unseasonably cold weather meant that, when the temporary LNG tanker was installed, we needed to ask our customers to moderate their gas use in order to ensure gas supply and pressure remained adequate. The community really responded here. They stepped up to the challenge by quickly moderating their use until the temporary pipeline solution was brought online.
How was Jemena able to get the support of over 40 contractors so quickly?
This was a key challenge we recognised early on. Simple math told us that, to reconnect over 20,000 customers, we would need to significantly increase our “boots on the ground”. To do this we mobilised crews from across our business, who travelled into the region to assist with reconnection efforts.
I am really proud to say that this was a genuine community and industry response. In addition to our own crew, we were also assisted by APA and other parts of our industry, with personnel coming from literally every state and territory in the country to assist with the reconnection effort.
Key to our success was the response from the community. Local emergency services offered their own personnel to give us much greater bench-strength. It’s no exaggeration to say that, without this additional peoplepower, our reconnection efforts would have been a lot slower. Thanks to their support we were able to reconnect approximately 20,000 customers extremely quickly once gas was restored – one week for Bathurst and just under a week for Oberon, Lithgow, and Wallerawang.
What has Jemena learned from the Young Lithgow Pipeline incident?
While there are many lessons to be gleamed from our recent experiences a couple of things stand-out:
- The role of the community – Our communities are resilient and able to support restoration efforts where they can, the key is to connect with the people at a grassroots level. The support of local councils, emergency services, and other welfare support services proved pivotal. It’s also important not to underestimate the power of old-fashioned modes of communicating. While many of our customers were receiving updates through social media, things like doorknocking were crucial in reaching all of our customers – particularly the elderly and other people who may not be connected online.
- Communicate regularly – Even if it’s just simple updates or repeating information you have previously shared, what may seem like a stale or dry message may not have been received by all of your customers.
- Maintain your values and principles – In the midst of things it’s easy to lose sight of those things which matter most, like safety. Make a point of focussing on these things regularly, for instance each day at the start of our Emergency Management Team meeting we would hold a safety spot – just by taking a moment to reflect on the importance of operating safely we were able to keep this value front and centre.
For more information visit Jemena or APA Group.
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This column is featured in the January edition of The Australian Pipeliner.