Not true. PHMSA rules, among other things, includes network security.
(1) The SCADA system (I design and program SCADA and control systems) was not compromised. They shut the line down "out of an abundance of caution". They got skeert... Their corporate business network was hacked and that was probably from inside. Some doofus probably clicked on an email he or she wasn't supposed to or downloaded something at home and brought it to work. Firewalls abound in the corporate IT world in the energy business.
(2) The Colonial pipeline ships fuels in batches. Ie Jet A followed by a buffer fluid followed by diesel followed by a buffer fluid followed by 100 low lead Av gas, etc ,etc ,etc. At the receiver end... btw... there are a lot of receipt points on the line, a densitometer (and usually an operator just in case, looks for a density change that signifies that the product stream is switching to buffer fluid at the expected time of arrival (not all of the time in other words). Valves switch to a buffer tank, the densitometer looks for whatever product they are receiving, when it sees the cut valves switch and the product flows to the product tank. We built a plant near Midland, PA that took propane off of a products line that originated in Chicago, IL. in much the same way. I built the control system for it. It looks like it's still there. The product tanks across the street weren't there. Cool project and cool people
40.628606°
-80.442663°
Years later we (different company) built a truck unloading terminal not too far from Wellsville, OH. I've been across the Newell bridge countless times. Our hotel was across the river in Newell.
(3) Speaking of tanks. The pipeline went down and there was a sudden panic buying (remnants of Covid toilet paper stupidity) because "we're out of gas". No they weren't. Depending on where inventory was there was likely to be 100's of thousands of barrels of products in storage. The pipeline isn't a nozzle straight in to the gas station. It goes to storage first, then it is trucked to the distributor, and that is trucked to the gas stations. This was hysterical panic buying induced shortages.
(4) Very few people know where the sh*t comes from.
(5) I feel like typing today
and misspelling
plus screwing up punctuation.
Do any of you know anything about natural gas and oil? Probably not. I like to know where my sh*t comes from plus I've worked in the business for 40+ years.
Lets start with what it's made from. Oil and natural gas is made up of organic molecules, called a hydrocarbon, made from Carbon and Hydrogen. Get it hydro = hydrogen and carbon = carbon.
Sometimes, most of the time, there are impurities like Nitrogen, Oxygen, CO2, and H2S. The CO2 and H2S have to be processed out of the wellhead stream before it is processed further. Rarely N2 is in high enough concentrations that it has to be removed, I've worked on a couple of NRU's over the years but it's energy intensive and costs usually don't warrant building the plant. But that's it, that's the primary components of natural gas and oil, Carbon and Hydrogen. Oh my... those are scary... not.
These are the more useful components of natural gas and oil. The heavier the molecule the more likely it'll ended up in a fuel tank. Typically C5 plus and additives.
C1 - Methane - CH4
C2 - Ethane - C2H6
C3 - Propane - C3H8
nC4 - Normal Butane - C4H10
iC4 - iso-Butane - C4H10
C5....C200+
All of the above can be reformed to something more useful.
We'll get back to ethane and the butanes in a minute. Pentane also has iso and normal versions.
Do you see pattern? CnH2n+2 where N is the number of atoms
Hidden in the compounds that I listed is the
methyl group, CH3. Those two little letters and a number impact you and yours every single day. It is the basis for just about everything you can touch or see right now. Plastic, including the covering of the wire or fiber optic cable that brings you the internet, electronic component packages, warm clothes (wasn't it Northface that did some kind of "statement" about fossil fuels. That was hilarious. Don't they know where their material comes from?), computers, methanol, fertilizer, fuel of course, roads, medicine (Zantac has ties to Propane but I could never get the customer to tell me how they used it
) on and on and on.
It's energy intensive derive a methyl group from hydrocarbons.
If you were driving down the road and could magically cut your ties to all things related to the oil and natural gas you would find yourself rolling down a dirt road, car gone, naked, and quite possibly dying of whatever ails you because your meds are gone. Oh... and you would also be starving. Even Elon Musk knows the value of the hydrocarbon molecule.
If you drive by a petrochemical plant (not a refinery, but refineries do have hydrogen flares, the refinery creates the feedstock for the petrochemical plant) and you see a stack with a tiny blue flame at the tip, the blue flame is the pilot that ensures that the hydrogen coming out of the stack is lit. You can't see a hydrogen flame. So where does that come from? In very simple terms a petrochemical plant consumes and rejects hydrogen. I'm getting out of my box so we'll leave it at that.
The carbon atom likes company. It has 4 valance (outer) electrons that want to hang out with friends. Hydrogen has 1 valence electron. In the case of Methane the 4 electrons double bond with 4 hydrogen atoms. I'm not 100% sure that Methane can be made to give up one of it's hydrogen atoms to form CH3. It would be wasteful and expensive considering that it's a good rocket fuel, and it's good for heating homes, making fertilizer, etc
Here's a diagram of Methane and Ethane
View attachment 464426
With Ethane, "all you have to do" is break the C:C double bond and you get two
methyl groups and no waste hydrogen. We make and sell a lot of Ethane but it's pricing is volatile due to the amount of it that is on the market.
Here's a diagram of Propane
View attachment 464430
Two methyl groups but with an extra carbon (smoke) and two extra hydrogens. Not worth the effort (yet)
Here's a diagram of iso and normal butane
View attachment 464428
Normal on the left, iso on the right. the - are double bonds (different way of drawing molecules). With normal butane you can split off two
methyl groups and have a lot more waste, with iso butane you can split off three
methyl groups and have one excess hydrogen.
Back in the late 80's there was a shortage of ethane and we seriously looked at adding an isomerization unit, isom unit for short to convert our normal butane stream to iso butane. It's energy intensive. You need a source of hydrogen and a catalyst. Storing hydrogen isn't the safest thing you can do (they tried it at the Skunkworks when they were developing the SR71)