Scores of oil and gas pipelines operated by BP in Alaska are dangerously degraded, posing a risk of spills or explosions.
An internal memo from BP, obtained by ProPublica, indicates that 148 pipelines in the North Slope region were given an “F” by the company. Such a grade indicates that 80 percent of the pipe wall is corroded, raising the risk of a rupture.
Some of the pipe walls had worn away to a few thousandths of an inch from bursting, while others, though built to be straight, had sagged to form U shapes. BP workers also warned that holding tanks for oil and gas are close to collapse, and that efforts to patch the damaged pipelines are not keeping up with the deterioration of the system.
“They’re going to run this out as far as they can without leaving one dollar on the table when they leave,” Marc Kovac, a BP mechanic and welder, told ProPublica.
Steve Rinehart, a BP Alaska spokesman, said that an “F” rank doesn’t necessarily represent an imminent safety risk, and that the company reduces pressure on lines when it sees a rupture as a possibility.
“We will not operate equipment or facilities that we believe are unsafe,” he said.
BP has sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into maintenance upgrades in the past few years, but some people within the company insist that the company’s efforts fall way short.
“When you make a complaint about it, rather than fix it right, they come up with another Band-Aid,” Kris Dye, a BP oil worker and United Steelworkers representative on the North Slope, told ProPublica. “It’s very frustrating.”
BP’s poor safety reputation stems mainly from the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in April, in which 11 workers were killed and millions of gallons of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico. But the company also has a checkered history in Alaska, with two spills in 2006 resulting in roughly 8 percent of the U.S. oil supply being briefly being cut off.
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