A River Runs Through It…

2007 is proving to be an unpredictable year on the weather front. After practically the hottest April on record, May has proved to be a bit of a wet blanket. The Environment Agency, in particular, must be breathing a sigh of relief.

April’s hot weather prompted them to urge the public to conserve water, amid fears of a drought this summer. In response to this, pipeline action group the Safe Haven Network were quick to point out their hypocrisy; National Grid’s contractor Nacap Land and Marine have an application lodged with the Agency to extract thousands of gallons of water from major Welsh rivers like the Tawe, Loughor and Lliw to “hydrostatically test” the pipeline.

In plain english, this means they will pump thousands of gallons of water from our rivers and run it through the pipeline at extremely high pressures. If any section of the pipe ruptures under this pressure (given the rust, this wouldn’t be surprising…) then National Grid have a problem. And their contractor Nacap Land and Marine JV (Dutch contractor Nacap BV now owns former partner Walter Lawrence) already has a dodgy reputation when it comes to polluting rivers…

Given April’s weather and the possibility of drought, rumours have abounded that maybe Nacap weren’t going to use water after all – one, rather far-fetched suggestion was that they would use Nitrogen instead – surely that would make it “Nitrostatic testing”? While it's true that an order has been placed for Nitrogen to be used in the pipeline - it's more likely to be earmarked for "Pigging", whereby a guage will be propelled through the pipeline to scan for any defects in the welds or inner lining. As another key safety check, Pigging will certainly be carried out on most, but not necessarily all of the pipeline, as we shall later see...

In light of this rumour, a supporter of the Network contacted the DTI for clarification. The response, now forwarded to yours truly, was as follows…

“Dear ----

As far as DTI is aware the pipeline will be hydrotested, as the name
indicates, with water. I have no idea where the suggestion for nitrogen
to be used to test the integrity of the pipeline originates. National
Grid nor its Works Contractors have sought DTI's agreement for another
means of testing of the pipeline.”

Regards

Gary

Gary Mohammed
Manager, Power Station and Pipeline Consents
Department of Trade and Industry.

As self-proclaimed champions of the Welsh environment you’d hope the EA will do the right thing when it comes to these applications. A company with a known pollution record has applied to extract water to test a pipeline which will only contribute to the huge problem of Climate Change. As last year’s Stern Report pointed out, Gas Transmission and Distribution is the single biggest source of Carbon Emissions in our economic system.

Unfortunately there’s another rumour going round (with a rather stronger basis in fact) – and that is that the EA’s dedicated pipeline team are being paid for by National Grid…