"Therefore, knowing that this field is located well above the Arctic Circle - you don't need a temperature sensor to know that by early November there will be sub-zero temperatures in place, he continued. "So, a basic risk assessment should have identified this possibility well before you needed a temperature sensor to tell you what the temperature in the line would be."
A top BP Prudhoe Bay official, who has grown "disillusioned" with the company's management style over the past year, agreed.
"Someone was clearly not paying attention to the flow," said the official, who also requested anonymity because he feared retaliation for discussing internal matters. "The temperature dropped and the line froze. This shouldn't have happened. I equate this with a lack of operating discipline and place the blame squarely on leadership."
Kovac said what Minge did not disclose to Murkowski
is that BP failed to take precautionary measures to "freeze protect" the
pipeline when it was last inspected in 2008. He said cold temperatures
causes pipelines to expand, making them more fragile.
Rinehart said freeze-protection "would typically be done if a line was to be taken out of service for a period."
"In this case, the line was in operation, but had a flow obstruction," he said. "We were working to assess the blockage and determine how to restore the line to operation when the leak happened. Ice had formed inside the line. This may have occurred because low-flow or slow-flow allowed water to accumulate in certain sections of the pipe.
"The line transported a mixture of oil, water and natural gas from well sites to the Lisburne Processing Center. Typically, the liquid in this mixture was about 25 percent oil and 75 percent water."
"This was an unused line," Kovac said. BP "tried to avoid the cost of freeze protecting it. They were hoping operators would be able to respond if something happened."
A person familiar with BP's Alaska operations said Rinehart's statement is incorrect and is only half the story.
"The Lisburne line was empty (no oil)," this person said."All oil has water in it until its processed.The water in the unused line froze (water was the obstruction).The water kept accumulating and expanded (ice) which caused the rupture as I understand it."
Two weeks after the spill, a "red flag" e-mail sent by BP's Prudhoe Bay Operations Manager to officials and employees on the oilfield advised employees of the "importance of adhering to established processes that ensure freeze prevention in flow lines, as well as, appropriate responses when freezing occurs."
Smoking Gun?
But there may have been other factors at play that led to the pipeline rupture at Lisburne, some of which appear to suggest poor management and cutbacks on safety.
Underscoring that point is an email sent to BP officials in Alaska last January from an employee who works at the Lisburne Production Center. The author of the email, whose name was redacted, said Lisburne is "operating in [an] unsafe condition."
The employee listed more than a dozen pieces of crucial production equipment that he claims were not working or were out of service at Lisburne during the time of the spill, thereby "leaving no back-up to running equipment and equipment out of service which should be on-line as per the system requirements to run the plant."
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