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A federal investigation has found the puncture of a natural gas pipeline in northeastern B.C. last November was caused by an inaccurate identification of the pipeline’s location.<\/p>\n
The Transportation Safety Board says in its investigation report that the accident happened along a stretch of pipeline operated by Westcoast Energy Ltd. about 150 kilometres northwest of Fort St. John.<\/p>\n
The report says crews were installing a new pipe that was to cross underneath two existing pipelines, and the puncture happened as they created an observation hole to track the path of the boring operation.<\/p>\n
The investigation shows that a pipe was inserted vertically into the hole to shore up unstable soil conditions and push through an obstruction, then the crew noticed a smell of gas and workers were evacuated from the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The safety board says about 47,000 cubic metres, or almost 20 Olympic-size swimming pools, of natural gas was released but it didn’t ignite and there was no explosion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Investigators say a previous aboveground locator stake showing where the pipeline was had been removed during cleanup, and a new stake was placed without verification. Then, when the crew dug the hole, they hit the pipeline, cracking it by six centimetres. <\/p>\n
“When changing site conditions resulted in the removal of the 2-inch-by-4-inch wooden post, the location of the pipeline was no longer positively identified,” the report says. <\/p>\n
“The construction crew began [drilling] the observation hole, [and] they relied on the incorrectly positioned stake,” it concludes.<\/p>\n
The federal agency says it is reminding construction crews to positively identify buried facilities before digging nearby.<\/p>\n
No one was injured in the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-770953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}