New plan for old pipe: Carry fracked liquids

• Natural gas liquids would come from fracking zones in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
• Kentucky oil and gas industry sees pipeline as important infrastructure.
• Critics point out natural gas liquids are more a more dangerous threat than natural gas.
• Much of the pipeline is some seven decades old.

LEBANON, Ky. – With red dirt piled nearby on grassy green meadow, workers in a hole were welding a weak spot on Kentucky's latest controversial pipeline — putting on a Band-aide, as one of them described it.

Just a few hundred yards from his home, physician James Angel approached the crew in his pickup truck, saying the maintenance only punctuated his fears about a Texas company's plans for the natural gas pipeline that crosses his Marion County farm.

Under those plans, Kinder Morgan's pipeline will carry a more dangerous product, natural gas liquids, in pipes buried seven decades ago in what Angel, a well-known urologist, described as the patriotic rush of World War II.

"If that line ruptures, it would kill me," he said. "It would kill my family, and it would poison our (community's) water supply. It's a threat to everybody I take care of in this county."

Kentuckians across the commonwealth are voicing similar concerns this spring as Kinder Morgan's Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. becomes the second pipeline company in two years to make a play to move valuable natural gas liquids from fracking zones in Ohio and Pennsylvania across Kentucky to the nation's petrochemical hub in Louisiana and Texas.

RELATED | Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. has poor safety record

While natural gas used in homes is methane, natural gas liquids are separated at the well site and can include a variety of hazardous hydrocarbons, including ethane, propane and butane. They are used to make plastics, rubber, solvents, antifreeze and refrigerants.

They are more dangerous than natural gas because they pose not only an explosion risk but also an asphyxiation risk, said Samya Lutz, outreach coordinator with the Pipeline Safety Trust, a safety advocacy group.

Kinder Morgan is a massive energy transportation and storage company, with more than 80,000 miles of pipeline. It argues in its application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that its Tennessee Gas proposal meets a vital need and does so without the negative impacts of constructing a new interstate pipeline.

Natural gas liquids are trapped geographically by a lack of pipeline capacity, which prevents them from being transported to markets that could use them along the Gulf Coast.

And company spokeswoman Melissa Ruiz said the pipeline can be converted to safely carry natural gas liquids.

"Kinder Morgan has analyzed, and will continue to analyze and evaluate, the internal and external surface of the ... pipeline with the latest technology," including probes with sensors called smart pigs for internal inspection, she said in a written statement.

The company will identify any "unacceptable imperfections" and, "where necessary, will upgrade the sections of pipe in question to bring them up to current code, prior to returning the pipeline to service."

Industry backing

Natural gas liquids are valuable building blocks of the nation's economy, and there has been something of a race to tap their full economic potential from an oil and gas boom in the Marcellus and Utica shale region of the upper Midwest and Northeast.

First, the Williams company and Boardwalk Pipeline Partners formed a joint venture to develop and construct the so-called Bluegrass Pipeline, which would have covered 200 miles and passed through 11 Kentucky counties. But after a bruising political and legal battle, Williams announced last April that it was putting the project on hold, saying it had not lined up enough customers.

The Courier-Journal first reported the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. proposal in August 2013, when the company's owner, Kinder Morgan, said it would work with another company, MarkWest Utica EMG, to develop it.

Then in February, Houston-based Kinder Morgan filed an application without MarkWest for a federal permit to shut down one of its Tennessee Gas pipelines that carries natural gas from the Gulf states to Kentucky and the Northeast. Kinder Morgan plans to sell that pipeline to another subsidiary, which would move the natural gas liquids south.

Angel, a former longtime Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Services commission member, believes the re-purposed pipeline would put the natural word at risk and depress property values. He has joined others in arguing the proposal is long on risk to Kentucky and short on economic gain — except for the pipeline company and other out-of-state interests.

The Kentucky Oil and Gas Association, of which Kinder Morgan is a member, endorses the proposal.

The association's executive director, Andrew McNeill, called it vital infrastructure as the oil and gas industry explores new deep, horizontal drilling into the Rogersville Shale formation across Eastern Kentucky.

"What is the potential? We don't know yet," he said. But if companies hit it big, oil and gas producers in Kentucky will need a way to get their natural gas liquids to market, too, and could tie into the repurposed pipeline, he said.

"Our producers see a lot of benefit," McNeill added.

Numerous groups, individuals and businesses including LG&E have filed requests to be included in the legal proceedings involved in the commission's decision, which focuses on whether abandoning the natural gas line will impact utilities and others that depend on a continued supply of natural gas.

LG&E supplies 320,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in and around Jefferson County with natural gas.

Utility spokeswoman Chris Whelan said Kinder Morgan has assured LG&E that the loss of one natural gas pipeline would not hinder natural gas deliveries.

"We intervened in the case to help protect our ability to serve our natural gas customers with economical and reliable supplies of natural gas," Whelan said.

Spans 18 counties

The entire reach of the pipeline slated for re-purposing is more than 900 miles, linking Natchitoches Parish, La., with Columbiana County, Ohio. The Kentucky portion is 256 miles.

The pipeline enters southwest Kentucky from Tennessee in Simpson County south of Bowling Green and follows a route to northeast Greenup County along the Ohio River. In all, it cuts across 18 counties. The proposal calls for putting in 7.6 miles of new pipeline in Carter and Lewis counties and new compressors in Rowan and Madison counties.

Opposition has developed where residents and some political leaders are worried about explosions, leaks and threats to drinking water.

More than 110 people came out to a recent public meeting on the pipeline in Marion County, Judge-Executive David Daugherty said.

"You have got some of these lines within 200 feet of people's homes," he said.

Water pollution concerns are exacerbated by the region's limestone-dominated geology, with its sinkholes, caves and caverns that could allow a spill or leak to spread for miles.

Danville and Boyle County have protested with resolutions.

Margie Hines, who owns a farm less than a mile from the pipeline near Danville in Boyle County, was moved to write to the federal energy commission, urging denial of the proposal.

Her worries include a segment of pipeline suspended over the Dix River as it flows into Herrington Lake. The lake supplies drinking water in her county and at least two others. "If there's a leak there, it gets into our water supply," she said.

The company has said it would move that stretch of pipe underground and in its application promises to minimize any threats to the environment.

Promises aren't enough for Louisville attorney Tom FitzGerald, director of the Kentucky Resources Council. He's calling for a full-blown environmental impact study to thoroughly review all the concerns, including the pipeline's age and the ability to withstand the stress of reversing its flow after so many decades.

"We do not believe re-purposing a 70-year-old line (to carry) more hazardous liquids is in the public's interest," he said.

Federal warning

Pipes created in the 1970s or before can be riskier because some construction techniques then weren't as good, said Lutz, with the Pipeline Safety Trust.

In fact, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last fall warned about the dangers of re-purposing and reversing the flow of pipelines, especially older ones. The agency cited two examples in 2013 of pipeline failures following flow reversals: a spill of 20,000 barrels of crude in North Dakota and a 5,000-barrel spill of crude in Arkansas.

The administration's latest annual reports from Tennessee Gas show that the company reported most of its pipe is older, and in Kentucky, the company's 1,614 miles of transmission pipe includes 343 miles installed in the 1940s.

And, 1,431 miles of its Kentucky pipe was installed before 1970, making it at least 45 to 55 years old.

"A pipeline maintained and properly inspected has no finite age limit," said Ruiz, with Kinder Morgan.

And while the company's application speaks of increasing pressure on remaining natural gas lines to meet demand, she said the "the abandoned line will be operated under pressures substantially similar to current operating pressures."

But some people aren't buying the company's assurances.

One is Candace Purdom who lives on five acres near Perryville and said "speaking up for a cause is new to me."

She said she only recently learned that the pipeline crosses a back corner of her property but is worried about impacts across Kentucky.

"I am going to join the fight against this stuff coming into the state," she said. "It's poison."

Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 or on Twitter @jbruggers. John Kelly of USA TODAY contributed to this report.

What's next:

•Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff will complete an environmental assessment of the proposal, or issue a notice for a more thorough review.

•The commission will ultimately need to approve the request for taking the pipeline out of service for natural gas, and any construction of replacement facilities.

•Future public involvement is uncertain.

•Kinder Morgan requests approvals by Feb. 15, 2016.

Pipeline county miles:

Greenup, 19.6; Lewis, 7.1; Carter, 12.4; Rowan, 20.5; Bath, 12.5; Montgomery, 12.1; Powell, 2; Clark, 6.7; Madison, 24.5; Garrard, 12.2; Boyle, 20.3; Marion, 19.7; Taylor, 10.8; Green, 14.5; Hart, 6.5; Barren, 27.6; Allen, 19.7; and Simpson, 7.6.