ANCHORAGE - Pipe Pressure Cited for 2,000 Gallon Jet Fuel Spill

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Friday, April 14, 2000

TITLE: Pipe Pressure Cited in Tesoro Leak

By KAREN AHO Daily News reporter

Up to 2,000 gallons of jet fuel spilled Thursday at Tesoro Alaska Petroleum Co.'s facility at the Port of Anchorage.

Shawn Brown, Tesoro's superintendent of pipelines and terminals, said fuel spurted from a pipe when a cap on a strainer came off during startup Thursday morning. Workers saw the leak and shut off the flow within a minute, he said.

Tesoro estimated that 970 gallons spilled, based on how much would have flowed through in the estimated time. But the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which responded to the site, said it looked as if twice that amount hit the ground.

The fuel flowed over a lipped concrete platform and into a shallow bed of gravel, where it traveled underground to a nearby slough, state environmental specialist John Bauer said. Workers laid absorbent boom in the slough, and Bauer said no fuel had been detected downstream in Cook Inlet.

He said Tesoro overpressurized the pipe while moving fuel, causing a 6-inch cap on a meter strainer to blow.

Vacuum trucks pumped up the standing pools of fuel, and workers dug holes in the gravel bed to extract groundwater and the remaining fuel. Bauer said the gravel will be removed as well.

In 1997, Tesoro spilled an estimated 840 gallons of gasoline at the port. The company had been piping gasoline from its Nikiski refinery to storage tanks when a sump, which siphons some gas for inspection, overflowed, the company reported at the time.

Reporter Karen Aho can be reached at kaho@adn.com or 257-4450.

Copyright ) 2000 The Anchorage Daily News

http://www.adn.com/stories/T00041492.html

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