EPA TO WAIVE CIVIL PENALTIES & RECOMMEND AGAINST CRIMINAL PROSECUTION FOR Y2K TESTING ACCIDENTS
Under this policy, EPA states its intent to waive 100% of the civil penalties that might otherwise apply, and to recommend against criminal prosecution, for environmental violations caused during specific tests that are designed to identify and eliminate Y2K-related malfunctions.
epa.gov
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BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON PIPELINE EXPLOSION
"Following this story, 3 kids toast, hundreds saved by fortuitous early ignition, 8 pipeline employees decline to cooperate with the NTSB investigation citing Fifth Amendment privileges ..."
remarq.com
Details below
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NATIONAL ALERT FROM PIPELINE ACCIDENT
REGULATORS URGE REVIEW OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS
Breakdowns in the Olympic Pipe Line Co. computer system just before and during last month's deadly accident in Bellingham have so alarmed federal regulators that they have issued a nationwide warning.
The federal Office of Pipeline Safety issued the warning this week to the 2,000 operators of liquid and natural-gas pipelines in the United States. It urged them to make sure that computer systems used to operate and monitor pipelines are working properly.
The advisory details a series of computer failures on June 10 around the time Olympic's 16-inch line leaked up to 277,000 gallons of gasoline into Bellingham creeks. Gasoline vapor later exploded in flames, and two 10-year-old boys and a teenager were killed.
After the accident, Olympic acknowledged that its computer system crashed on the afternoon of the accident. The computer problems may have kept Olympic personnel from reacting quickly to the leak, regulators said.
The computer system is known as SCADA -- supervisory control and data acquisition. Such systems are common in the industry, though they may have been built at different times by different manufacturers.
All such systems go under the generic name of SCADA.
Some companies, including Olympic, add to their computer systems leak-detection equipment. Olympic's uses such information as temperature and pressure to detect leaks.
But investigators with the Office of Pipeline Safety have determined that Olympic's computer system broke down on the day of the accident.
"Immediately prior to and during the incident, the SCADA system exhibited poor performance that inhibited the pipeline controllers from seeing and reacting to the development of an abnormal pipeline operation," regulators said in their advisory.
The Office of Pipeline Safety is part of the U.S. Transportation Department.
Regulators did not name Olympic in the advisory. But Patricia Klinger, a spokeswoman for the Office of Pipeline Safety, acknowledged that the incident mentioned in the advisory and prompting the warning was Olympic's Bellingham accident.
The message to other pipeline operators, she said, is to "take extreme caution."
"We don't want to see this repeated."
Gerald Baron, an Olympic spokesman, said the company believes federal regulators are being prudent in sending out the advisory to pipeline operators.
Baron could not discuss the details of the computer problems and cautioned against focusing on computer difficulties or any other single factor as a cause of the accident.
Regulators believe Olympic's computer system typically operated at 65 percent to 70 percent of capacity.
But on June 10, the system had an internal database error. That error, plus the demands put on the computer by the leak, "hampered controller operations," the advisory said.
"The combination of the database error, the inadequate reserve capacity of the SCADA processor and the unusually dynamic changes that occurred during the upset condition appear to have combined and temporarily overburdened the SCADA computer system," regulators said.
"This may have prevented the pipeline controllers from reacting and controlling the upset condition on their pipeline as promptly as would have been expected."
Regulators also said that modifications made to the computer system after it was installed may have caused it to malfunction.
The Office of Pipeline Safety ordered Olympic on June 18 to find out what went wrong with its computer system and correct it. It also ordered the company to make a comprehensive review of its SCADA system.
Those demands came as part of a corrective order that closed the upper 37 miles of the 400-mile pipeline. Regulators also ordered the company to undertake several safety modifications and reviews.
The Office of Pipeline Safety may soon issue additional orders regarding Olympic's pipeline , Klinger said.
seattle-pi.com
July 9, 1999 - Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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June 19, 1999
VALVE MIGHT HAVE LIMITED PIPELINE SPILL, investigators say
The gasoline spill that culminated in a deadly explosion and fire in Bellingham might have been greatly limited had a valve worked properly, federal regulators say.
A block valve, which is intended to close a section of pipeline, is located just one-tenth of a mile north of where the rupture occurred near Whatcom Creek.
But the valve "either malfunctioned or was not closed in a timely fashion," investigators found. As a result, up to 130,200 additional gallons were released, the U.S. Transportation Department wrote in describing the preliminary findings of an investigation into the accident ...
Investigators trying to determine a cause of the spill and to assess its aftermath will pay attention to the valve, said Keith Holloway, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.
"We are looking at the SCADA (computer) system and operations of valves," he said.
SCADA is a computerized system by which Olympic controls, monitors and detects leaks in the pipeline.
It wasn't working right before and during the spill, according to preliminary investigative evidence cited by the Transportation Department. "System response time was reported as slow, and the system's recording of some data was not consistent with normal operation."
Olympic officials say about an hour before they had the first reports of a possible leak their computer system crashed ... continued
seattle-pi.com
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VALVES? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
"But while the company was testing some of the equipment that controlled oil VALVES in its refineries, engineers inadvertently discovered a host of new problems. Thousands of terminals that control the (dispensation) of oil have old chips with a Year 2000 problem.
"The chips ALL need replacing - BUT the new chips won't fit on the old
motherboards and the new motherboards don't fit the old VALVES. So all the VALVES have to be replaced too."
December 9, 1997 - Letter to Alan Greenspan
y2ktimebomb.com
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BACK TO BELLINGHAM EXPLOSION ...
In 1997, Olympic also used an internal device known as a "smart pig" to inspect that section of pipeline. The inspection found some wall thinning but within Olympic's standards."
Made me recall an email which was sent to me in late 1997:
Problems I suspect with the satellite control over remote sites, along the gas and oil pipelines worldwide. They are sequentially run systems that operate in a date and time driven environment. I discovered this researching a new oil and gas line being built in Australia.
If these words don't raise a big red flag ... there are thousands of check and measuring stations, valves, mixing stations, pig insert locations, pumps ... and the list goes on and on. All reporting condition, pressure, volume, actions taken and timing via satellite back to central computers. This embedded chip problem is just becoming a known problem. As this is the energy delivery system from the wellhead to the end user, It needs a careful look.
I think one key to searching out the embedded chips is to look at the enviroment they respond in(to) and the pipelines are in a sequential time date enviroment. I will be talking to some industry folks tomorrow myself. I want to know how many fields are subject to the same sequential time date reporting chips. I will coin the word STDC:)
Here is a map you can navagate to see how many of the remote stations are satellite controlled in a sequential time date environment:
pge.com.au
#2 is a remote pig launcher and meter station monitored and CONTROLLED from Brisbaine - sure hope the pig launcher is fail safe to the off position it sure could plug things up if it were to be launched at the wrong time. It is a good example of a remote computer station with embedded chips, valves with embedded chips to preform the opening and closing functions in sequence with other remote locations, meters with embedded chips, launchers most likely with embedded chips.
The other stations work at mixing and diluting different gas types so methaine (coal gas) can be used in the mix safely. I can see a lot of reasons to look into this and get the actual facts on each stage and station to see how it will be affected.
I think you can see how this gets multiplied as you enter a multicity system ...
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SPACE COMMAND PLANS Y2K TESTS ON GPS
Federal Computer Week
The U.S. Space Command plans to conduct another series of Year 2000 tests on the Global Positioning System this month [June '99].
The Space Command plans to conduct Year 2000 tests on Space Vehicle 43 in the GPS constellation June 22, June 25-26, June 28 and July 1. The tests, which the command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., has yet to officially announce, will involve advancing the system clock in the satellite to Dec. 31, 1999. Other tests will include advancing the clock to Feb. 28, 2000, to test that the satellites will work on Feb. 29 and March 1.
In addition, the Space Command on June 28 will test the GPS' "end-of-week rollover," which occurs about every 20 years. More precisely, every 1,023 weeks, the GPS clock starts over at 0000 weeks. GPS system time commenced Jan. 6, 1980 -- when the first satellite in the constellation began operation -- and was programmed to roll over after 1,023 weeks. Rollover will occur at midnight between Aug. 21 and Aug. 22, 1999.
One specialized group of users has started to brace itself for the possibility of disastrous results from the tests. In April, the Space Command experienced problems when it conducted a test on one of the 24 satellites in the GPS constellation. Scientific institutions that belong to the International GPS Service (IGS), which maintains
a worldwide network of 200 GPS receivers that measure tectonic plate movements and provide centimeter-level accuracy to surveyors, reported widespread problems during the April tests. "A disturbingly large number of receivers in the global network had problems,'' one user told FCW.
Message 10002428
Oil & Gas Update
Message 10410920
Diesel Oil Prices
Diesel fuel prices have hit a 17-month high and could move even higher. Last week's numbers from the U.S. Department of Energy show the national average rose half a cent to $1.087 per gallon.
Message 10413087
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The Office of Pipeline Safety is part of the U.S. Transportation Department.
DOT (Department of Transportation)"Y2K Progress Report Card"
Nov '98: D
Feb '99: F
May '99: C
How Grades were Assigned
- Finishing in 2000 OR 2001 = C
- Finishing in 2002 = D
- After 2002 = F
Mission Critical Systems of Federal Departments and Agencies:
Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology
Message 8628762
Cheryl
173 Days until 2000
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