FT: China oil explosion highlights pipeline perils as cities expand
By Lucy Hornby in Beijing
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Students and shopkeepers in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian had a lucky escape when a crude oil pipeline exploded near a residential area and a school, sending flames into the night sky and forcing a temporary evacuation.
Although no one was hurt, the incident highlighted how China’s sprawling cities are spreading across land that had been previously put to industrial use, with few systems in place to prevent potentially lethal accidents.
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China National Petroleum Corp, parent of listed PetroChina, said a construction company drilling in the Jinzhou area of Dalian had breached its crude pipeline on Monday evening, resulting in the explosion of crude that leaked into gutters.
A similar incident in November in the coastal city of Qingdao caused an explosion that ripped up residential streets and killed more than 60 people. The pipeline in that case was operated by rival oil group Sinopec, which traded blame with the city government for not authorising repairs to infrastructure running under the streets.
“Urbanisation poses a great challenge to the operation of pipelines in the city,” said Lin Boqiang, an energy expert at Xiamen University. “Dalian is an old oil port, and some of the pipelines to a certain degree haven’t caught up with the urban planning in the city.”
About 14m Chinese move to cities every year while existing city dwellers upgrade to roomier housing, contributing to urban sprawl into areas once set aside for industry.
CNPC came under fire along with water treatment group Veolia when benzene in the soil of a 50-year old petrochemicals zone contaminated drinking water in the northwestern city of Lanzhou in March. The government ordered both groups to apologise, and bulldozed a squatters’ village in the zone.
City planning bureaucracies often fail to co-ordinate with each other, resulting in streets recently ripped up and repaired becoming construction zones again for a different department’s project. Such a system means that construction crews might have no idea what lies underneath large equipment.
“Why was the construction team not aware that there were pipelines under the ground they were drilling? It shows that there lacks communication between CNPC and other relevant construction parties,” said Li Yan, analyst with Chinese petrochemical information provider Oil Chem.
After the Qingdao explosion, Beijing ordered a safety check of the national pipeline grid.
A CNPC official said pressure sensors in the Dalian pipeline detected the leak and shut off the flow of oil. Previous reports from energy experts linked to the military have found that many of China’s oil and gas pipelines lack even that safeguard.
