CALGARY – It could take several days to dispose of hazardous gas that mistakenly got into a major Canada-U.S. natural gas pipeline.
Alliance Pipeline, whose B.C.-to-Chicago system has been shut since Friday, starting burning off the gas at two locations in southeastern Saskatchewan on Sunday.
READ MORE: Poisonous gas that smells of rotten eggs prompts shutdown of BC-Chicago pipeline
In an online notice, Alliance said flaring was the safest way to get rid of the gas that was contaminated with poisonous hydrogen sulphide, or H2S.
It said people in the Alameda and Arcola areas of Saskatchewan may see and hear the gas being burned, but it shouldn’t have any odour. Residents are being asked to avoid the immediate area as a precaution.
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Natural gas processor and transporter Keyera Corp. (TSX:KEY) said Friday that the toxic gas got into the Alliance pipeline after a “brief operational upset” at its Simonette gas plant in northwestern Alberta two days earlier.
Among the services Simonette provides to customers is “sour gas sweetening,” or handling gas from deposits that naturally contain H2S.
Keyera spokesman Nick Kuzyk said some of its customers’ gas has been diverted to a different system operated by TransCanada (TSX:TRP), but there’s a limited amount of room.
It’s not known yet what caused the problem at Simonette or how much H2S got into the Alliance system as a result, said Kuzyk.
“There’s some data that we are able to extract from the detection equipment that we can analyze over the course of this week, once everything’s back up and running,” he said. “That’s still to be determined, but priority number 1 is getting Alliance back up and running.”
A number of producers have had their operations hampered by the Alliance closure, most recently Athabasca Oil (TSX:ATH), which has suspended some output while shifting other production onto the TransCanada system.
Other affected producers include Seven Generations Energy (TSX:VII), RMP Energy (TSX:RMP), Cequence Energy (TSX:CQE) and Crew Energy (TSX:CR).
The Alliance Pipeline is jointly owned by an Enbridge affiliate (TSX:ENF) and Veresen (TSX:VSN).
The line runs 3,848 kilometres and ships 1.6 billion cubic feet of gas a day.
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