Pascagoula

An investigation is continuing into the cause of an explosion late Monday that has shuttered an Enterprise Products Partners LP natural gas processing complex in Pascagoula, MS.

The Chevron Corp.-operated West Texas Liquefied Petroleum Gas System pipeline located near Milford, TX, that exploded Thursday morning resulted in a fire that was still burning late Friday afternoon, according to the company, which on Friday morning was also dealing with an unrelated refinery fire in Pascagoula, MS, that resulted in one death and one injury.

The BP-operated Pascagoula (MS) Plant has informed Destin Pipeline that a full plant shutdown will be required Tuesday to replace a leaking upstream valve. The processing outage will begin at 9 a.m. CST and is expected to last no more than 12 hours. The Destin gas stream is rich enough that it must be processed to meet quality specs of downstream pipes, a spokesman said, so Destin operators will have to shut in during the plant work. Current throughput is down to about 500 MMcf/d because of some producer maintenance, so the plant outage will affect about 250 MMcf that day. An earlier Destin bulletin board posting had said the plant work was set for Monday, but it was decided early Thursday afternoon to wait until Tuesday in an effort to accommodate producer interests, the spokesman said.

Destin Pipeline will shut in when the Pascagoula (MS) Gas Plant begins about four days of maintenance May 1 at 6:30 p.m. CDT. Current Destin throughput is about 650 MMcf/d, a staffer said. The pipeline will accept about one-third of normal nominations for the May 1 gas day and will resume taking nominations on May 5 once the plant is operational. The start of the plant work represents a one-day postponement from when it was originally announced last month (see Daily GPI, March 12).

The Pascagoula (MS) Gas Plant has informed Destin Pipeline thattwo to three days of maintenance is tentatively planned to begin atthe plant on April 30 and it expected to require shutting in boththe plant and pipeline during that period. The two entities areworking together to minimize the duration of the shut-in, with theplant using last week’s downtime to initiate some of the workoriginally expected to occur during the April shut-in.

Destin Pipeline reported experiencing problems at both the MainPass 260 platform and the BP Amoco Pascagoula Processing Plant with”some objectionable substance” flowing into the system. It cut theVKGS Main Pass 260 point to 50% of scheduled volumes Monday. Thepoint was shut in Tuesday and no nominations are being acceptedthere until further notice, Destin said.