Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

114Disasters Waiting to Happenas pipeline bombings have become common in the Middle East, they have alsostarted to occur more regularly in the United States. A Shell gasoline pipeline inOakland, California was damaged in 1969, a Puerto Rican pipeline in 1975, andthe Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 1977 and 1978 (as described below). 123 A compendiumof bombing incidents lists dynamite attacks on twenty gas pipelines (rangingfrom two to twenty inches) and on two gas-pipeline cooling towers in Kentuckyin 1974. 124 And pipelines can be sabotaged by as simple a means as turning valves,most of which are readily accessible. 125 For example, during a refinery strike inLouisiana, someone shut the valves on a twenty-four-inch gas pipeline, causingthe gas to be flared through safety valves. 126“Little can be done to stop a determined, well-equipped, and knowledgeablesaboteur or terrorist” from disrupting a pipeline, since “[I]t would not befeasible to monitor the entire length of a pipeline frequently enough to preventany action,” and virtually “no...security precautions were taken in that saferday when most...pipelines were built.” 127 It is nonetheless important to understandboth the potential contributions and the inherent limitations of securitymeasures that can be taken.Pipeline sabotage and repairGas and oil pipelines, ranging up to forty-eight inches in diameter, and frequentlylaid in parallel groups on the same right-of-way, are welded from steelusing special specifications and procedures. They are ordinarily buried in trenchesdeep enough to protect them from bad weather but not from earthquake orground shock, as was shown in 1975 when ground shock from a bomb sheareda gasoline pipeline from a tank farm to San Juan, Puerto Rico. 128 Major pipelinesin such seismic areas as St. Louis, Lima (Ohio), Socorro (New Mexico), and SaltLake City appear to be at risk from earthquakes. 129The main cause of damage to buried pipelines has so far been mundane—accidental excavation. In a classic 1981 episode, for example, constructiondrilling in the heart of the San Francisco financial district burst a sixteen-inchgas main, producing a two-and-a half-hour geyser of gas. The gas got into theventilation systems of high-rise buildings (luckily, not in explosive concentrations)and forced the evacuation of up to thirty thousand people. 130 The ease ofaccidentally digging up pipes implies that they could be dug up deliberately too.(It could be done instantaneously with military-type shaped-charge excavatingdevices.) Corrosion is another enemy: Iranian gas shipments to the SovietUnion were cut off when salty soil and heavy rains caused the failure and explosionof a major Iranian pipeline. 131 Mainly to prevent accidental damage, buriedpipelines are clearly marked, especially at road and waterway crossings, as