Mega Bus for Business Travel in California

Being tired of flying on a crowded Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 and it is the cold and flu season when being crowded in a small jetliner may be risky.  I decided to try out a new method of getting from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Los Angeles Metro Area called Mega Bus. 

OK, it is new to the West Coast of the USA.  Europe and the East Coast of the USA can hardly consider this method of travel all that new.  USA West Coast Service is a currently limited to San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Las Vegas, Reno, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. 

I took Amtrak up to the San Francisco Bay Area from Claremont CA (Los Angeles County) which I will write about in a latter blog posting. 

My Mega Bus ticket was a bit less than $4 USA and I got to put it on my expensive report since it was business travel.  No, the bus ticket is not normally that cheap; but I got a really especial discount.

Not an option if you  have a lot of luggage as one is limited to one small checked bag and one small carry on bag.  I left from the San Francisco Caltrain Station and arrived in Los Angeles Union Station with only one stop in San Jose for passenger pickup and one stop at ButtonWillow CA near Baskersfield CA for a bus driver switch. 

The bus was very empty with about 21 passengers.  I left San Francisco at about 7:10 PM and arrived Los Angeles around 2:30 AM.

The free WiFi on the bus is good for email but not much else.  It appears to work best with my Apple iPod Touch and not well at all for my laptop computer.

Seating is comfortable and it is possible to sleep on the bus even in a very windy situation.  There is a restroom on the bus.  It is a double deck bus as the photo shows.

I highly recommend Mega Bus for cheap business or vacation travel. 

This Blogs Readers

This blog is doing amazingly well considering the fact that I really don't have the time that I wish I had to write blog postings.  It is interesting to note that this blog has significant readers only in the USA and Germany.   No Middle East or Canadian readers to date worth mentioning.  

The amount of readers gives me encouragement to continue posting blog articles as I have the time to do so.

A Flash From the Past - A. O. Smith Flash Welded Pipe

This pipe's flash welded long seam has a tendency to have corrosion pitting in the pipe seam and heat affected zone of the pipe seam if exposed to electrolyte. 

Devonian Black Shale as a Possible Pipeline Corrosion Issue

Warren Anderson gave me permission to post this email on this blog.  I have no comment on this and you can contact Mr. Anderson as this name below has a hyperlink to his email address.   If any desire to comment on this issue to me; I am interested in hearing what you have to say about this.

Mr. Hodgman,

I saw your corrosion control engineer blog and wanted to make contact concerning some pipeline corrosion issues we have in Kentucky.  I am a research scientist and geochemist at the University of Kentucky and saw that you had an interest in this area of pipeline corrosion that I have done some research in. 

I have done some preliminary work in the Devonian Black Shales in Kentucky where about 30-40 % of pipeline failures in our state have occurred when the pipeline is sited in the Black Shale.  There are geochemical reasons for this, the shale contains pyrite, an iron sulfide which oxides and forms a mild sulfuric acid, lowering the pH of groundwater and accelerating the corrosion of any steel pipelines.  The Beaumont, Ky pipeline disaster noted this in the NTSB reports.   Building anything in organic black shales is troubling, but pipelines have the potential for catastrophic events, so I have been trying to get some  research funding to study this problem..

If you know anyone in the eastern US who has pipelines in black shales please pass this message on to them.  I have a report out on some severe foundation problems (heaving) in the black shales, http://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/ri18_12.pdf,  which would also extend to pipelines.

Good blog, Keep up the good work.

Warren Anderson

Beaumont & Lancaster Kentucky Natural Gas Pipeline Ruptures

This will be a posting that will take awhile to finish.  This is the first draft.

This twin pipeline rupture in Kentucky had a major impact on pipeline corrosion control in the USA.

The major impact was a realization of the limitations of cathodic protection due to shielding issues that existed as a cause in both ruptures. Beaumont rupture was due to a highway casing shielding cathodic protection current.  This caused government regulators to demand that the pipeline operator run smart pigs in Kentucky to verify the intregity of the pipeline as this was the only method of verifying that other cased pipeline crossings didn't have serious corrosion damage.  This caused the start of the transfer of pipeline integrity budgets from CIS (Close Interval Survey) to upgrading of pipelines to run smart pigs and the running of smart pigs.  Cathodic protection staff tended to  considered the smart pigs to be experimental devices of questionable value, but government regulatory staff viewed smart pigs as the future of pipeline integrity and some pipeline operators who has experimented with smart pigs agreed.  Smart pigs at that time were low resolution and not as accurate at sizing corrosion pitting as present day tools.  The lack of accuracy in sizing corrosion pitting and claims that CIS was sufficient was the argument used by pipeline operators who were not impressed with smart pigs prior to the Beaumont incident.

Lancaster pipeline rupture occurred about a year later and resulted in more government regulations related to smart pigging since this rupture should not have happened. Once again the corrosion damage that caused the pipeline rupture was due to shielding of cathodic protection, but this time it was a rock in contact with the bottom of the pipe.  A smart pig had found the significant corrosion damage and the pipe was incompletely inspected because of the rock.  Two pipe inspectors couldn't agree on the seriousness of the corrosion damage due to the rock the pipe was in contact and no attempt was made to expose sufficient pipe to raise the pipe off the rock so that a complete inspection could be made.  the pipe was recoated as best as possible with a rock in contact with the pipe and buried.   Later the pipeline ruptured and the pipeline operator had to explain how corrosion damage not detected by CIS but found by a smart pig and incompletely inspected had failed.  Operator error, improper training of pipe inspection personnel, and sloppy pipeline integrity procedures was blamed as the cause of the rupture but smart pigs proved to be accurate in finding serious corrosion damage that previous CIS had failed to find due to a rock shielding Cathodic protection current.

Both incidents proved the value of smart pigs and the limitations of CIS.  In the NTSB report which covered both failures, CIS was clearly documented to be detective in finding serious corrosion damage if shielding issues existed.  Smart pigging was promoted as a solution to the limitations of CIS.  In addition NTSB did a survey of Kentucky pipeline operators as to how common natural gas pipeline ruptures due to external corrosion occurred.  All natural pipeline operators reported that ruptures due to external corrosion damage were rare.

The tendency of cathodic protection companies is to assume that a major news making event such as a natural gas pipeline rupture due to external corrosion will result in more business for them.  Typically the news story on a natural gas failure is that the pipeline operator had not upgraded the pipeline for the running of smart pigs and if the operator had run a smart pig the failure should not have happened.  Typically cathodic protection budgets are not increased for the doing of CIS after a major pipeline failure due to external corrosion; but smart pig budgets are increased for the modification of pipelines to run smart pigs.  The recent West Virginia natural gas rupture due to external corrosion is yet another example of if the pipeline operator had only upgraded the pipeline for running a smart pigs this could have been prevented.  If the salespersons marketing CIS have not noted the news stories on the recent external corrosion rupture that sound like all newspapers are marketing smart pigs without a sales commission; they are in a state of denial of reality.   

Corrective Action Order to Florida Gas Transmission LLC

PHMSA/OPS has issued a corrective action order to Florida Gas Transmission LLC which can be viewed here.

Final Order for Texas Gas Transmission LLC

PHMSA/OPS has issued the final order for Texas Gas Transmision LLC, a subsidiary of Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP.  One of the fines was for failure to check for internal corrosion when pipe was removed during maintenace operations.  The final order can be viewed here.