Does a CO2 pipeline leak in Mississippi hold lessons for Canada?

When he saw a nearby explosion in Satartia, along with Zebrae Burns, his brother and his cousin, in early 2020, in early 2020.

“We returned from a fishing trip and we saw the mushroom cloud. As an explosion, but without firing. It was a big white cloud in the air.”

Satartaria doubted that he went through a close pipeline passing through the hills. It was not what he could not know, oil or natural gas, compressed and liquefied carbon dioxide pipes.

The area around immediately pressed drowning gas, which can be fatal in summary because it comes from oxygen. He called his mother on the blast. Seconds then the car’s engine was off; The burners, his brother and cousin all came out.

“My phone was still on. He called on my name: Debrae, garbage, trash, and I stopped talking.”

In Mississippi, no one died in the explosion of this pipeline, but the first respondents and residents say they need to tell more about the risks to better prepare for possible emergencies.

In Alberta, a CBC CI2 pipeline with large Canadian energy companies defending the CO2 pipeline, went to the sale of the first hand in the possible risks when a CO2 pipeline passes through a society.

Why a CO2 pipeline?

Carbon dioxide can be transported via a pipeline for many reasons. In the case of a pipeline in the Mississippi, it is for a process called the rehabilitation of developed oil, which transports CO2 to oil wells.

In Canada, a consortium of the country’s largest energy companies, the road alliance, Alberta offers a massive carbon dioxide pipeline that will reduce the production of Oilsan products.

The North Alberta will seize carbon dioxide from more than 20 oils in northern Neftands and carried them 400 kilometers away from a pipeline to be detained in a natural lake region. After that, CO2 will be kept underground to prevent waste from entering the atmosphere.

The Union has first offered the project in 2022, but there are Still recent agreements It is years to promote the federal and provincial governments and how to pay for it.

Carbon Seizure and Storage (CCS) is considered part of a global scale net zero waste solution International Energy Agencyand one The main part of the plans of oil-store companies To cut off waste from the level of third from the level of 2019 to 2030.

Critics have likened CCS to redness in the climate struggle.

New York Times Review Column since 2022 CCS is called “every dollar” spent on “waste” Instead of transitioning to clean energy sources, “as a climate change, such as laboratory,” labor reservoir “continues to produce gas and oil production.

Residents living near the place where the proposed pipeline will be buried Told Narwhal’s last autumn There were concerns about how potential leaks or hernia could affect water, sow and local contracts.

What happened in Mississippi

Satartia, Miss. It was so straight in a local delta, he said a dog that you can watch that he fled three days.

Some residents in the blast night were outside a scan. Hugh (Bubba) Martin, an army veteran living in Sataria, the pipeline baked music and gas burners. But then it discovered a smell like rotten eggs that fill the air.

Soon everyone struggled to be conscious.

“You were awake, but it was not registered. Only your brain did not work. I want to say that everyone was trying to collapse. Everyone came out.” Said.

Soon, local ambulance services, 911 challenges explaining the smell of gas, roads and cars of cars were flooded with the smell of cars.

CO2 odorless and colorless, but local residents told CBC that they came from violent hydrogen sulfide or sour gas.

Jack Willingham, Urgent Management Director for Yazoo County, where the pipeline is located, said they did not know that the first responding was at least in the first 30 minutes. He said he had a CO2 pipeline passing through his district.

“In a special time, we did not communicate with us with what happened to us and the pipeline operator.”

An eerie scene

Carbon dioxide is not dangerous in the dose. People take it every time we can take it. However, in higher concentrations and cool, cloudy weather, CO2 will not always collapse into the atmosphere. Instead, sit in an invisible cloud in the ground, making it difficult to breathe from oxygen, or even impossible. The internal combustion engines also choke, that is, many vehicles do not work.

This made the rescue operations more difficult in Mercy, as the first responders struggled to escape vehicles. Some of them were wearing air masks and tanks to breathe into the city.

Jerry Briggs, firefighters and neighboring Warren County, the EMS coordinator said he was like a dream city when the Mercy team arrived. Most residents fled, but the answers had to look for the rest of the rest.

Lights on Saturday night at 8:00. Lights; TVs. Cars there; No one (inside).

Driving along highways seeking sacrifices, the most stopped cars were empty. But there were three in this: the garbage burns, his brother and cousin, all unconscious.

First of all, Briggs thought they were dead, but they soon realized they were still inhale. All of the firefighters were very small in the territorial utilities, so the team gathered three unconscious men on the back side of gear and spare air tanks.

“We said in the South, we have downloaded them as deer, you seem to say that after the deer hunt,” he said. “I know that it sounds terrible, but in retrek, they would not survive.”

Firefighters took them to safety and then taken to a hospital in the nearby Vicksburg by Paramedics.

“We founded us, we foamed, we foamed in his mouth, we barely breathed,” he said. After remembering, they would not survive there if they left there for five minutes.

Next and questions

Forty-five demanded medical care in the hospital and more than 200 people were evacuated from the territory of sataria. Officially, everyone recovered. Although it can prove the link, burns, as a result of exposure and approximately three hours, believe that about three hours are unconscious.

“I suffer from memory loss. You know, I have a hard time careful. I don’t have a lot of people. You know, far from much.”

Willingham say the explosion happened, for some clay soils in Yazoo County “tend to slide more than normal dirt in the area” and heavy rain is even more unstable.

If one or two hours after one or two hours later, the society would be dead.– Hugh (Bubba) Martin

In the investigation of the explosion, the results of the US pipeline and security management offered the probable violations of the rules of the federal security rules and offered a court hearing. Instead, Denbury, the operator of the pipeline, agreed to pay a fine of only $ 3 million.

In 2023, ExxonMobil, who has purchased Denbury, said that it “strengthens the infrastructure to prevent future events” and “closely works with local respondents to ensure a well-adapted answer to any event,” he said.

In a statement to the CBC, Pathways Alliance said, unlike the CO2 pipeline, which is built in an area of ​​the proposed project, primarily in a land slip, will be built in a corridor, he said. “

At the same time, both computer systems and human operators said that real-time pressure monitoring, seismic imagement and leakage detection, seismic image and leakage will be a “multi-layer security system”.

Willingham has better information to protect themselves in their territories, regardless of where the community is in their territory.

“Never, if you have a CO2 event in your life, what do you have to do in your area? Why don’t we teach our people what to do?” Said.

“I’m not the anti-pipeline, I’m not a pipeline. I just have public safety.”

Martin says that if the explosions occurred after people have already been in bed, it can be catastrophic.

“If it happens after an hour or two hours, this society would be dead.”