US' Olympic pipeline system restarted after Sunday's outage

Singapore (Platts)--26May2004

The US' Olympic Pipeline has successfully restarted its 400 mile (645 km)
products system after an outage Sunday due to a leak and associated fire in a
small sampling line, the company said in a statement. Olympic completed
repairs of the damaged half inch stainless steel sample line, which had a
small hole in it causing gasoline to leak at the Renton pumping station.
Repairs were also made to a single valve on the 20 inch main line that
sustained minor damage as a result of the fire. BP-operated Olympic runs from
Blaine, Washington, to Portland, Oregon, and transports about 12-mil gal/day
of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. "Throughout this entire incident, our
priority has been public and responder safety and environmental protection at
the incident site," said Olympic president Bobby Talley. "Now we will turn our
full attention to determining the cause of this accident and ensuring it does
not happen again," he added. Assessment so far indicates environmental impact
is minimal and contained to the immediate incident area, Olympic said.

Surface and ground water sampling is to continue to monitor any additional
environmental impacts. Extensive water testing confirmed the released product
was contained on site and the trace levels of hydrocarbon found in a nearby
drainage trough are consistent with levels found in urban waterways and are
well within water quality standards, Olympic said. Five monitoring wells are
to be installed to continue the observation of site conditions. A remediation
plan would follow completion of monitoring well installations and soil sample
testing. Safety inspections of similar sample lines are continuing at
locations along the Olympic system to ensure safety and system integrity
beyond the immediate area, the company said. A thorough investigation is
underway to determine the exact cause of the incident, Olympic added.

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