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The Aliso Canyon gas leak (also called Porter Ranch gas leak
[ and Porter Ranch gas blowout) was a massive ]natural gas
Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...
leak in the Santa Susana Mountains
The Santa Susana Mountains are a transverse range of mountains in Southern California, north of the city of Los Angeles, in the United States. The range runs east-west, separating the San Fernando and Simi valleys on its south from the Santa C ...
near Porter Ranch, Los Angeles
Porter Ranch is a suburban neighborhood in the northwest San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles, California.
History
New home construction that was completed in the Porter Ranch area in the 1990s–2000s, including the Renaissan ...
, California. Discovered on October 23, 2015,[Sharon McNary (10 February 2016]
Sorting out Porter Ranch facts vs. rumors
/ref> gas was escaping from a well
A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...
within the Aliso Canyon underground storage facility. This second-largest gas storage facility of its kind in the United States belongs to the Southern California Gas Company
The Southern California Gas Company (trading as SoCalGas) is a utility company based in Los Angeles, California, and a subsidiary of Sempra Energy. It is the primary provider of natural gas to Los Angeles and Southern California.
Overview
Its ...
(SoCal Gas), a subsidiary of Sempra Energy
Sempra is a North American energy infrastructure company based in San Diego, California. The company is one of the largest utility holding companies in the United States with roughly 40 million consumers. Sempra's focus is on electric and natura ...
. On January 6, 2016, Governor
A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of ...
issued a state of emergency. On February 11, the gas company reported that it had the leak under control.[ On February 18, state officials announced that the leak was permanently plugged.
An estimated of ]methane
Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Ea ...
and of ethane
Ethane ( , ) is an organic chemical compound with chemical formula . At standard temperature and pressure, ethane is a colorless, odorless gas. Like many hydrocarbons, ethane is isolated on an industrial scale from natural gas and as a petroc ...
were released into the atmosphere.[Conley et al., ''Methane emissions from the 2015 Aliso Canyon blowout in Los Angeles, CA''. In: '']Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
'' (2016), . The initial effect of the release increased the estimated 5.3 Gt of methane in the Earth's atmosphere by about 0.002%, diminishing to half that in 6–8 years.
It was widely reported to have been the worst single natural gas leak in U.S. history in terms of its environmental impact. By comparison, the entire rest of the South Coast Air Basin The South Coast Air Basin—SCAB (or SoCAB) is one of several regional air basin areas designated by the state of California, for the purpose of air quality management and air pollution control in Southern California. The SCAB district was created i ...
combined, with a population of about 18 million people, emits approximately 413,000 tonnes of methane and 23,000 tonnes of ethane annually. The Aliso gas leak's carbon footprint could be larger than the ''Deepwater Horizon'' leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
Facility
After oil was discovered at Aliso Canyon in 1938, J. Paul Getty's Tidewater Associated Oil Company produced oil and gas until the Sesnon-Frew reservoir, the largest reservoir within the oil field, was depleted in the early 1970s. On December 18, 1968, a blowout and fire, destroying equipment but causing no injuries, occurred at one of the wells when an operator attempted to remove two gas-lift valves. Getty sold his portion of the field to Pacific Lighting Company, a gas company, which repurposed it to gas storage in 1972. As opposed to current practice, older wells were not sealed to the surrounding rock formation, including their often more than one mile of steel casing. Today, "cement from the surface of the ground to the bottom of the well ..makes the casings stronger and protects them from water."[ The Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility contains 115 wells tapping a reservoir that "hold up to 86 billion cubic feet of natural gas for distribution to residences, businesses, and electric utilities in the L.A. basin".] The field is the second largest storage facility of its kind in the United States.[
]
Discovery of leak
Southern California Gas Company
The Southern California Gas Company (trading as SoCalGas) is a utility company based in Los Angeles, California, and a subsidiary of Sempra Energy. It is the primary provider of natural gas to Los Angeles and Southern California.
Overview
Its ...
said the leak in well SS-25 was discovered "on October 23 during one of its twice-daily well observations."[ Residents of the nearby Porter Ranch reported what they thought was a home with a major leak on October 23, 2015. SoCal Gas "went from home to home to home, giving everybody the A-OK and ..didn't admit to having a gas leak until ..probably around the 28th of October."
Local residents believed the gas blowout started before SoCal Gas admitted to discovering it, and many residents reported having unexplained illnesses a week or so earlier. According to KPCC's website, some residents posted complaints of earlier symptoms on a Porter Ranch gas leak Facebook page.]
This event has been called a blowout in many news reports and by the Attorney General of California
The attorney general of California is the state attorney general of the Government of California. The officer's duty is to ensure that "the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced" ( Constitution of California, Article V, Secti ...
, Xavier Becerra. For instance, a February 2016 article in the ''Orange County Register'' called "Gas facility that had blowout over Porter Ranch will have to play by new rules." stated "in the case of the blown-out well, the casing is believed to have failed under high pressure, allowing the gas to escape." According to OSHA's website a blowout is "an uncontrolled flow of gas, oil, or other well fluids" from a well."
As of February 1, 2016, the SS-25 well released an estimated 91,000 metric tons of methane gas." ''The Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
'' said that "while this gas blowout has prompted comparisons to BP's oil well failure in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989, experts say this leak will have further-reaching environmental consequences."
Causes
The source of the leak was a metal pipe in a breached casing of injection well "Standard Sesnon 25" (SS 25) that lies deep.[ SoCal Gas had hypothesized that the leak was no more than down in the column used to move gas in and out of the well.][ Well SS 25 was drilled in 1953 and initially had safety valves, which were removed in 1979 because the valves were old and leaking.][ Because the well was not considered "critical, that is, one within 100 feet of a road or a park, or within 300 feet of a home", the valves were only removed and not replaced. Multiple safety valves had been removed from the Aliso Canyon/Porter Ranch 1950s-era pipes in 1979, and were never replaced, a fact that was also confirmed by a special investigation into the leak by Congressman Brad Sherman's office.][ A Staggering Methane Leak Has Caused a State of Emergency in CA]
The Big Picture RT January 7, 2016, retrieved January 11, 2016 The atmospheric scientist Steve Conley said the wellhead in Aliso Canyon was 61 years old and he was not "shock dthat it failed".[Edward Oriti]
UC Davis scientist key to measuring massive methane leak at Aliso Canyon
Sacramento Bee, January 7, 2016 One reason for the casing failure may have been gas flow not just through the tubing, but also through the casing "in order to meet the demand of a customer", as told by an injection well expert of Texas A&M University interviewed by NPR
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
.
On December 7, 2015, an anonymous video was published that showed a cloud of methane gas hovering over the community of Porter Ranch. The image was captured with an infrared camera, showing the extent of the otherwise invisible plume.
On May 17, 2019, the California Public Utilities Commission
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC or PUC) is a regulatory agency that regulates privately owned public utilities in the state of California, including electric power, telecommunications, natural gas and water companies. In addition ...
announced that Blade Energy Partners had completed their root cause analysis of the gas leak that occurred on October 23, 2015. The principal findings from the root cause analysis include:
* The leak's direct cause was a rupture of the outer 7-inch well casing due to microbial corrosion Microbial corrosion, also called microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC), microbially induced corrosion (MIC) or biocorrosion, is "corrosion affected by the presence or activity (or both) of microorganisms in biofilms on the surface of the cor ...
from the outside resulting from contact with groundwater.
* SoCal Gas did not conduct detailed follow-up inspections or analyses after previous leaks. Blade Energy identified more than 60 casing leaks at Aliso Canyon before the October 2015 incident going back to the 1970s, but no failure investigations were conducted by SoCal Gas.
* SoCal Gas lacked any form of risk assessment focused on well integrity management and lacked systematic practices of external corrosion protection and a real-time, continuous pressure monitoring system for well surveillance.
* Updated well safety practices and regulations adopted by the California Geologic Energy Management Division address most of the root causes of the leak identified during Blade Energy's investigation.
On May 17 2019, the California Public Utilities Commission also published a video describing the details of the leak.
In response to the report from Blade Energy, SoCal Gas issued a response stating "Blade's report confirms SoCal Gas complied with gas storage regulations in existence at the time of the leak. Blade Energy also determined that SoCal Gas' updated practices in 2019 and new state regulations address most, if not all, of the causes identified in the report."
Emissions
Natural gas consists largely of methane, an invisible and odorless greenhouse gas with a global warming potential
Global warming potential (GWP) is the heat absorbed by any greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, as a multiple of the heat that would be absorbed by the same mass of carbon dioxide (). GWP is 1 for . For other gases it depends on the gas and the time ...
86 times greater than carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is trans ...
in a 20-year time frame, tailing off to about 29 times the effect of carbon dioxide in a 100-year time frame on a mass per mass basis. The leak initially released about 44,000 kilograms (kg) of methane per hour or 1,200 tons of methane every day, which in terms of greenhouse gas output per month compares with the equivalent effluvia from 200,000 cars in a year.[ On January 14, 2016, ''Time'' magazine compared the 1.6 million lbs of methane released each day to the emissions of 6 coal-fired powerplants, 2.2 million cows per day, or 4.5 million cars. As of January 2016, the latest methane measurement per the ]California Air Resources Board
The California Air Resources Board (CARB or ARB) is the "clean air agency" of the government of California. Established in 1967 when then-governor Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford-Carrell Act, combining the Bureau of Air Sanitation and the Moto ...
(Carb) was from December 22, 2015, and had decreased from a peak of 58,000±12,000 kg/h[ to 30,300 kg/h,][ the equivalent of more than 1.4 million cars by a different calculation using EPA estimates.][Paul Blak]
How many cars and burping cows equal the California gas leak?
BBC News, Washington, January 11, 2016 The Aliso gas leak carbon footprint is referred to as "larger than the ''Deepwater Horizon
''Deepwater Horizon'' was an ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig owned by Transocean and operated by BP. On 20 April 2010, while drilling at the Macondo Prospect, a blowout caused an explosion ...
'' leak in the Gulf of Mexico".[California's Methane Gas Leak Environmental Catastrophe Explained]
Antidote, interview with Timothy O'Connor, TheLipTV2, 36 min, January 6, 2016, retrieved January 11, 2016 This single event had a 100-year global warming potential of about 1.5% of the entire annual SoCAB methane and carbon dioxide emissions.[
Steve Conley, an atmospheric scientist at ]UC Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
and owner of Scientific Aviation, independently measured the gas emissions. He sampled the air by flying over the site in his single-engine airplane equipped with an analyzer, which is one of only 3 or 4 of such planes in the country. He said the Aliso Canyon flights were "the hardest ..I've ever done" because of the headache-inducing smell and sickening turbulence. He doubted the readings initially, and "thought he instrumentshad stopped working because I'd never seen measurement that large before." He had coincidentally been contracted by the California Energy Commission
The California Energy Commission, formally the Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, is the primary energy policy and planning agency for California.
Created in 1974 and headquartered in Sacramento, the Commission'core respon ...
prior to the gas leak, and said that if he had not been contracted and ready to go, "no one would have known how big he leakwas."[
Methane emissions from the Aliso Canyon gas leak were detected by the ]TCCON
The Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) is a global network of instruments that measure the amount of carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and other trace gases in the Earth's atmosphere. The TCCON ( ) began in 2004 w ...
site at Caltech
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
within a day of the start of the leak, but researchers at Caltech did not have an explanation for what was causing something "really weird" over Pasadena until later. TCCON's monitoring data were used in analyses of the leak to estimate ethane emissions of 7,700 ± 1,700 tonnes using Steve Conley's methane estimate of 97,100 tonnes.[
Besides methane, the gas leak contained ]tert-butyl mercaptan
''tert''-Butylthiol, also known as 2-methylpropane-2-thiol, 2-methyl-2-propanethiol, ''tert''-butyl mercaptan (TBM), and ''t''-BuSH, is an organosulfur compound with the formula (CH3)3CSH. This thiol is used as an odorant for natural gas, which ...
, tetrahydrothiophene
Tetrahydrothiophene is an organosulfur compound with the formula (CH2)4S. The molecule consists of a five-membered saturated ring with four methylene groups and a sulfur atom. It is the saturated analog of thiophene. It is a volatile, colorles ...
, and methyl mercaptan
Methanethiol (also known as methyl mercaptan) is an organosulfur compound with the chemical formula . It is a colorless gas with a distinctive putrid smell. It is a natural substance found in the blood, brain and feces of animals (including humans ...
, which gives the gas a rotten-egg smell. These odorants have been used for decades and were considered harmless although they can cause nausea and vomiting.[ In addition, the gas contains some ]carcinogen
A carcinogen is any substance, radionuclide, or radiation that promotes carcinogenesis (the formation of cancer). This may be due to the ability to damage the genome or to the disruption of cellular metabolic processes. Several radioactive subs ...
ic benzene
Benzene is an organic chemical compound with the molecular formula C6H6. The benzene molecule is composed of six carbon atoms joined in a planar ring with one hydrogen atom attached to each. Because it contains only carbon and hydrogen atoms ...
.[ The pollutants may have long-term consequences far beyond the region.]
Effect on local community
Local residents have reported headaches, nausea, skin rashes, and severe nosebleeds.[ About 50 children per day saw school nurses for severe nosebleeds.][ There have been more than usual eye, ear and throat infections.] By December 25, 2015, more than 2,200 families from the Porter Ranch neighborhood had been temporarily relocated, and more than 2,500 households were still being processed. As of January 7, 2016, 2,824 households or about 11,300 people had been temporarily relocated by SoCal Gas,[ while more than 6,500 families have filed for help.][ Two schools were relocated in January.][
The community of ]Eight Mile, Alabama
Eight Mile is an unincorporated community in Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The community is named for its distance from the city of Mobile. Part of it was annexed in the mid-20th century by the city of Prichard, Alabama.
Geography
Ei ...
had a spill of the natural gas odorant
An aroma compound, also known as an odorant, aroma, fragrance or flavoring, is a chemical compound that has a smell or odor. For an individual chemical or class of chemical compounds to impart a smell or fragrance, it must be sufficiently vol ...
within their community in 2008. Residents continue to experience these symptoms under their long-term exposure to mercaptan. The residents say they got very little of the assistance provided to Porter Ranch residents. Methyl mercaptan is toxic if inhaled according to its MSDS sheet. However, it is considered fairly harmless by government and industry officials. Whether it is the source of the illnesses in Porter Ranch and Eight Mile has been a subject of debate.
Closure of well
By the end of November 2015, SoCal Gas had attempted six well kill
A well kill is the operation of placing a column of heavy fluid into a well bore in order to prevent the flow of reservoir fluids without the need for pressure control equipment at the surface. It works on the principle that the hydrostatic head o ...
procedures to stop the gas flow by pumping a mixture of mud and brine down the well, the last being on November 25. The attempts failed because of ice formation and a high upward pressure averaging .[Associated Pres]
Huge California gas leak could take months to fix
CBS News, January 2, 2016, retrieved January 11, 2016
On December 4, 2015, SoCal Gas started drilling a relief well
Relief wells are used both in the natural gas and petroleum industry and in flood control. Fossil fuels
In the natural gas and petroleum industry, a relief well is drilled to intersect an oil or gas well that has experienced a blowout. Specializ ...
to the caprock, down, with the help of Boots & Coots Boots & Coots was a well control company. It was founded in 1978 by Asger "Boots" Hansen and Ed "Coots" Matthews, veterans of the Red Adair Service and Marine Company. The two companies extinguished approximately one third of the more than 700 oil ...
, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The relief well is "similar to the relief well BP's engineers drilled to stop oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon
''Deepwater Horizon'' was an ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig owned by Transocean and operated by BP. On 20 April 2010, while drilling at the Macondo Prospect, a blowout caused an explosion ...
disaster".[ The plan was to pump liquid and cement into the main well once the relief well could vent the gas safely.][ SoCal Gas estimated the first relief well would be completed by February 24, 2016.] SoCal Gas planned to drill a secondary relief well, estimating the leak repair to take up until the end of March 2016.[
After the seventh effort to plug the leak with slurry starting December 22 had created a 25-feet-deep crater around the wellhead, the danger of a blowout increased. The well needed to be stabilized with tension cables and further attempts to plug the well from above were halted. State regulators became more concerned about the wellhead's stability.]
In January, SoCal Gas sought permission to capture the natural gas and possibly incinerate it, but state regulators voted against it, worried about safety.
On February 11, 2016, the relief well intercepted the base of the leaking well and the company began pumping heavy fluids to control the flow of gas out of the leaking well. On February 18, 2016, state officials announced that the leak was permanently plugged.
Criticism
Steve Conley, the atmospheric scientist that has been measuring the leak's gas emissions, has stated that there was no rapid response plan for this kind of event: "We do not have anything in place to measure giant leaks like this, or to watch them to solve issues." He suggested that contracts needed to be ready so that, "as soon as a leak is spotted you are given a go order and two hours later you're measuring a leak."[
]Mitchell Englander
Mitchell Englander (born July 25, 1970) is an American former politician who served as a member of the Los Angeles City Council, representing District 12 in the San Fernando Valley, until he resigned December 31, 2018. While serving in City Counci ...
, the Los Angeles City Councilman representing Porter Ranch, criticized SoCal Gas "operating a facility of this magnitude, ..feeding 20 million addresses" for not having a backup plan, the delay in bringing necessary equipment on site "from the Gulf states like they did in this particular situation" and the delay in catching the brine, oil and chemical mist landing on people's homes and blackening their cars.
The Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity is a nonprofit membership organization known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, creative media and grassroots activism. It was founded in 1989 by Kieran Suckl ...
criticized Governor Brown's slow response "because state regulators' hands-off approach to underground injection helped set the stage for this catastrophe." The center also said, "The state has known for years that aging natural gas infrastructure was a disaster waiting to happen, but officials mostly ignored those risks."
Experts in petroleum engineering criticized the delay for not drilling a relief well until six weeks after the leak was known, and for drilling only one relief well instead of two.[
The ]Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
reported that SoCal Gas had been under-reporting the levels of benzene in the air surrounding the well.
Regulatory reactions
Within two days of discovery, "a dozen or more local and state agencies were involved".[ The ]California Air Resources Board
The California Air Resources Board (CARB or ARB) is the "clean air agency" of the government of California. Established in 1967 when then-governor Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford-Carrell Act, combining the Bureau of Air Sanitation and the Moto ...
measured methane on the ground near the well, from towers, satellites and airplanes, communicating results to the California Energy Commission
The California Energy Commission, formally the Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, is the primary energy policy and planning agency for California.
Created in 1974 and headquartered in Sacramento, the Commission'core respon ...
and SoCal Gas. The Board asked SoCal Gas eighteen very detailed questions about the natural gas, basic leakage rate and leak dynamics.[ The ]Federal Aviation Administration
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic ...
established a temporary flight restriction
The Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) are rules prescribed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) governing all aviation activities in the United States. The FARs comprise Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). A wide variety ...
over the leak site until March 2016. On December 7, 2015, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer sued SoCal Gas over its handling of the well failure. On December 15, 2015, the County of Los Angeles
Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is th ...
declared a state of emergency.
Feuer's Office went to court again on December 23, 2015, and secured a judicially-enforceable agreement with SoCal Gas for the company to speed up relocation efforts of residents affected by the massive leak.
Local residents called upon Governor Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of ...
to intercede. Kathleen Brown
Kathleen Lynn Brown (born September 25, 1945) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 29th Treasurer of California from 1991 to 1995. Brown unsuccessfully ran for Governor of California in the 1994 election.
Early life and e ...
, his sister, is on the board of Sempra Energy
Sempra is a North American energy infrastructure company based in San Diego, California. The company is one of the largest utility holding companies in the United States with roughly 40 million consumers. Sempra's focus is on electric and natura ...
, which owns Southern California Gas
The Southern California Gas Company (trading as SoCalGas) is a utility company based in Los Angeles, California, and a subsidiary of Sempra Energy. It is the primary provider of natural gas to Los Angeles and Southern California.
Overview
Its ...
. The Governor visited the site and the neighborhood on January 4, 2016, and declared a state of emergency on January 6, 2016. He issued stepped-up inspections and safety measures for all natural gas storage facilities in California; further injections at Aliso Canyon had already been prohibited.[
Local health officials indicated that long-term exposure to certain trace chemicals could lead to health problems.][
In January 2016, two California senators asked the heads of the ]US Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...
and US Department of Transportation
The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT or DOT) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by the secretary of transportation, who reports directly to the President of the United States a ...
and the Environmental Protection Agency for a "legal analysis of any federal authorities that could apply to this incident and storage fields in general" and a "technical analysis of whether Southern California Gas Company could more quickly reduce the gas stored in the facility." On January 11, four California State senators introduced bills to enact an immediate moratorium on any new injections of natural gas and the use of vintage wells (SB 875), to ensure that SoCal Gas will pay housing, relocation and emergency response costs and prohibit the California Public Utilities Commission
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC or PUC) is a regulatory agency that regulates privately owned public utilities in the state of California, including electric power, telecommunications, natural gas and water companies. In addition ...
(CPUC) from allocating those costs to ratepayers, and that it will pay the costs to mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions from its utility profits (SB 876). SB 887 would require all 14 underground natural gas storage facilities to be inspected within the next 12 months and at least annually thereafter; it would also require enhanced safety standards, such as the installation of subsurface safety valves, using new leak-detection technology and development of rigorous response plans.
The unavailability of the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility caused insufficient delivery of gas to power plants
A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid.
Many pow ...
, leading to a strained electricity grid
An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. It consists of:Kaplan, S. M. (2009). Smart Grid. Electrical Power ...
. The CPUC ordered Southern California Edison
Southern California Edison (or SCE Corp), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of ap ...
to install a 20 MW (80 MWh) lithium ion battery
A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also see ...
storage capacity at the utility's Mira Loma substation near San Bernardino, California, to mitigate power failures during winter.
Political reaction
On March 31, 2016 ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' published a magazine feature article about the leak called "The Invisible Catastrophe", noting that in an election year, a "menacing disaster that causes mass vomiting and mass nosebleeds in a wealthy, vote-rich community ... is a candidate's dream." While crediting Governor Jerry Brown as the "only politician who has failed to use the gas leak for political gain," it noted freshman Congressman Steve Knight's acceptance of campaign contributions from SoCal Gas' parent company Sempra Energy, and his continued defense of the company into December when he said they were "working on this as diligently as they can." While Knight later called for congressional hearings on the matter, one of his opponents, Democrat Bryan Caforio, quickly seized on the environmental disaster as a central issue of the 25th Congressional race, which according to the Times article "promise to be one of few closely contested races in the House."
''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
'' wrote that no politician is "pursuing the issue as hard as Caforio," who on January 6, 2016, spoke to a group of disgruntled Porter Ranch residents who attended a meeting co-hosted by environmental activist Erin Brockovich
Erin Brockovich (née Pattee; born June 22, 1960) is an American legal clerk, consumer advocate, and environmental activist who, despite her lack of education in the law, was instrumental in building a case against Pacific Gas & Electric Compan ...
. Caforio "aggressively attacked" his opponent, Steve Knight, for his delayed response to the leak. While Knight stated he did not want to politicize the disaster, fellow Republican Michael Antonovich, a Los Angeles County supervisor who has voted consistently against regulation efforts, was outspoken about his determination to hold SoCal Gas responsible.
Aftermath
Elected officials, including Congressman Brad Sherman and Senator Henry Stern, took the position that no decision about whether to reactivate the facility should be made until the health study and an ongoing search for the leak's cause were complete. SoCal Gas had been repeatedly asking California regulators for permission to resume pumping pressurized natural gas into the ground in Porter Ranch, northeast of Los Angeles, at the depleted oil field, which has continued to be used for storage. Records show the utility was negotiating this step with regulators for several weeks. Since the multiple investigations into the cause of the leak have not been completed, Congressman Brad Sherman insisted that the process of reopening the storage facility must proceed with extreme caution. Aliso Canyon is not deemed ready to resume normal operations by regulators or chief politicians that are involved with the oversight of the securing and cleanup of the leak. Congressman Brad Sherman urged that the gas company be restricted to minimal operations required to prevent power interruptions. The storage field is a primary supplier to gas-powered electric plants. The gas leak has been cited by experts and independent researchers as the largest in U.S. history.[Article in EcoWatch.com 27 February 2016](_blank)
accessed 31 January 2017
Legal consequences
On November 23, 2015, some residents who had been displaced by the leaking gases filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court to require that SoCal Gas disclose information related to the health risks of the gases released. The plaintiffs also had continued to seek damages.
In January, it was thought that residents might have filed as many as one thousand lawsuits.
On February 2, 2016, Los Angeles County filed criminal charges against SoCal Gas for its failure to report the leak immediately. The charges include three counts of failing to immediately report the leak following its detection on October 23, 2015, and one count of "discharging air contaminants" beginning the same day.
On September 13, 2016, ''The Los Angeles Times'' reported that SoCal Gas reached a plea agreement with the Los Angeles County prosecutor's office. Under the agreement, SoCal Gas pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor count of failing to immediately report the October 2015 leak and was ordered to pay a $4 million fine.
The resulting settlement between the local Los Angeles prosecutor's office and SoCal Gas executives had ended in a mere misdemeanor charge, the lowest possible charge, which can be expunged
In the common law legal system, an expungement proceeding is a type of lawsuit in which a first time offender of a prior criminal conviction seeks that the records of that earlier process be sealed or destroyed, making the records nonexistent or u ...
. In addition to the negotiated plea deal, SoCal Gas had paid a penalty fine of a relatively small $4 million U.S. dollars, the equivalent of the amount of revenue that SoCal Gas received in profits in less than most average 12 hour time periods during the fiscal year
A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ...
of 2015. The Porter Ranch Gas Leak has been cited often by experts and independent tests as the largest gas leak in U.S. History.
In 2018, SoCal Gas agreed to payments of $119.5 million to several government entities over the incident.
See also
*Aliso Creek (Los Angeles County)
Aliso Creek (also Aliso Canyon Wash or Aliso Wash) is a major tributary of the Upper Los Angeles River in the Santa Susana Mountains in Los Angeles County and western San Fernando Valley in the City of Los Angeles, California.
It has a watershe ...
* Exide lead contamination in southeast Los Angeles County
* Four Corners Methane Hot Spot
*
References
External links
CalOES.gov: official Alison Canyon Natural Gas Leak website
– The California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (CalOES).''
SoCalGas.com: official Aliso Canyon gas leak website
CPUC.gov: Aliso Canyon Well Failure
– ''California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), State of California''.
– ''Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), January 15, 2016''.
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