Pipeline restarts south of Mayflower rupture

Exxon Mobil restarted the southernmost section of its Pegasus pipeline earlier this month, more than a year after an oil spill in Mayflower forced the company to shut down the entire line, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration approved the oil giant's restart plan for the southern section, all in Texas, on March 31.

"The segment was restarted on July 9," Exxon Mobil Corp. spokesman Aaron Stryk said in an email interview. "We lined up additional crude barrels to allow continuous operations beginning July 21."

The southern section includes a 205-mile segment between Corsicana and Beaumont, Texas, and a 6-mile segment between Beaumont and Nederland, Texas. Until 2006, these segments operated independently from the rest of the 850-mile-long pipeline, which runs to Patoka, Ill.

Under the federally approved restart plan, the southern section must operate at no greater than 80 percent of the operating pressure that was in effect immediately before the Mayflower accident on March 29, 2013. The pressure restriction is to remain in effect until the company gets written permission to do otherwise.

Stryk said the section is operating at 80 percent and that the Texas segment restarted "following the completion of extensive safety and operational testing."

The northern section, which includes the portion running through Mayflower, remains idle.

The pipeline ruptured between two houses in Mayflower's Northwoods subdivision, sending an estimated 210,000 gallons of heavy crude into the neighborhood, drainage ditches and a cove of Lake Conway. Authorities have said the oil did not reach the main portion of the lake.

Safety administration spokesman Damon Hill said in an email Tuesday that the regulatory agency "has not approved ExxonMobil's remedial work plan for the northern segment at this time."

In that work plan, filed March 28, subsidiary Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. noted that months ago a Texas laboratory had found manufacturing defects -- specifically hook cracks -- as the cause of the rupture in the pipeline, built in 1947-48.

But the company added, "The degradation mechanism of the hook crack defect to failure was undetermined."

U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, an Arkansas Republican whose 2nd District includes Mayflower and Lake Maumelle, said Tuesday that he remains "concerned that Exxon Mobil doesn't know what caused the defects in the pipeline in Mayflower, and I will continue to push ExxonMobil to relocate the pipeline from the Lake Maumelle watershed."

"When it comes to protecting our communities, our environment and our drinking water, meeting the minimum requirements of the law should be a given, and going the extra mile to ensure pipeline safety is the right thing to do," he added in an email.

Lake Maumelle provides drinking water to about 400,000 central Arkansans. About 13.5 miles of the Pegasus line travel through the watershed.

Three houses have been demolished since the rupture because of oil beneath their foundations, and Exxon Mobil has bought about two dozen other homes from residents who didn't want to continue living in the neighborhood. The cleanup continues in the cove.

State Desk on 07/30/2014

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