With eyes on Gulf, BP Alaska pipes remain at risk

"When you make a complaint about it, rather than fix it right, they come up with another Band-Aid," said Kris Dye, a BP oil worker and United Steelworkers representative on the North Slope. "It's very frustrating."

One critical maintenance issue concerns the replacement of the warning systems used to alert workers to a gas leak that could lead to an explosion.

The need to replace the gas detectors was made a priority in 2001 in an internal BP report that said oil field technicians were "very concerned about continuing degradation of system reliability, and the ability of these systems to protect the workforce."

Nine years later, outdated systems to detect fire and leaked gas remain in place at some of BP's largest and most important plants, including the Central Power Station, several drill pads and two flow stations that route oil and gas into the pipeline system.

Many of the detection systems are obsolete - the manufacturers that made them are shuttered - so replacement parts are hard to come by, said Kovac, the mechanic. More important, the systems have to be shut down every time BP conducts maintenance on its facilities and pipelines, because the methods used to scan the equipment for flaws have been known to trigger the ultraviolet detectors that set off the fire and gas alarms.

As a result, BP technicians on the North Slope say, the detectors at some facilities are shut down nearly a third of time. When they are off-line, the company relies on what employees refer to as "human fire detectors" - a foot patrol that sniffs for flammable materials and listens for the hiss of broken pipes.

BP has been upgrading the detection systems in recent years and has installed new ones at several facilities, including the buildings that house its workers. But many important facilities remain on the list.

According to people inside BP who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about company affairs, replacing all the detections systems could take nearly 20 years at the current rate of investment.

"They say, 'Yep, in the next few years we're going to upgrade all this fire and gas stuff and it's going to be more dependable,' and blah, blah, blah," said Glenn Trimmer, a BP technician who works on the Slope. "Well, after a few decades, I'm not buying it anymore. We can't even maintain the equipment that we have."

A close call in 2007 illustrates the risks presented by aging facilities with limited alarm systems. In August of that year, a giant turbine used to compress gas before it is pumped back through the company's pipelines caught fire inside BP's Gathering Center 1 after an oil hose ruptured and spewed flammable liquid across the motor. A mechanic on patrol in the facility - seeing smoke - fled the room as the turbine burst into flames. But the automatic fire and gas alarms were never triggered.

A subsequent investigation by Alaska state authorities found that a ruptured hydraulic oil hose was jury-rigged in a position that chafed against the turbine's hot engine. The probe also found that the facility's fire and gas detectors - which Kovac and Dye likened to life boats on a cruise ship - were not on at the time.

The turbine fire was potentially serious not only because no alarms were sounded but because the turbine engines operate near gas and oil pipelines that could be detonated by an uncontrolled fire. The incident was classified by BP Alaska's then-president, Doug Suttles, as a "high potential" event, and news of it was distributed around the BP organization globally as a precaution.

Yet this year, even before the enormous costs of the Gulf oil spill created an estimated $30 billion in BP liabilities, the company was eking out more "efficiencies" in its Alaska budget. It said it would maintain record high funding for new projects and major repairs while reducing its budget for regular maintenance, according to a letter that BP Alaska President John Minge sent to Congress in February. The letter said holding-tank inspections will be deferred and replacement of one pipeline will be postponed; flows through that line will be reduced "to mitigate corrosion."

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