Town residents nixed key pipeline fuel size increase: Fenech reflected
But the size increase, which would have been an economic payoff locally with a much easier flow of product to fuel storage units in Knoxville, didn’t happen, said Jason Fenech, senior operator/Right-of-Way for Colonial, who addressed Farragut Lions Club members during a recent FLC meeting in Mimi’s Café in Turkey Creek.
“In Atlanta, it starts out as a 16-inch line, and it’s 16-inch all the way to Sugar Limb Road (Loudon County), and then at Sugar Limb it becomes 10 inch,” he said. “… In 2003, we brought 16 inch all the way up to Sugar Limb, and we had a plan to bring all the way to Knoxville.”
However, “We had so much flak and and threats and abuse from all the neighborhoods in Farragut that did not want us ‘to dig up and put your pipe in there,’ that (pipeline officials) gave it up as a bad decision, and we never went through with it,” Fenech added.
Reflection on the Town that turned age 44 in late January, “there are a lot of well-off neighborhoods in Farragut, and there’s a lot of people that know people,” the Colonial official said. “There’s a lot of people with connections. It came down to ‘not my backyard.’
“Otherwise, the hydraulics of this line makes so much more sense if you can bring that 16 all the way in” to Knoxville, Fenech added, noting with the narrow 10-inch line, “We create so much pressure at that place we have to put in a product called Drag Reducing Agent just to get it to work.”
The line running through Farragut, Knox County and Knoxville is a “sub-line” that ties into a major line in Atlanta.
Colonial “is the largest refined proAucts pipeline (carrying gas, diesel fuel, keorsene) in the United States,” said Fenech, whose regional area of responsibility goes to the Hiwassee River area in Polk and Bradley counties. “It’s not the longest, it’s not the biggest, but it is the largest. We move the most products. We’re headquartered in Alpharetta (Georgia).”
Going from Texas and Louisiana — where many refineries plug their newly created product into the Colonial lines — north and east through 13 states to New York, “We have 5,500 miles of pipe, and it takes generally about 20 days for a drop of product that went into Houston to come out in New York,” he said.
A major line goes east from Atlanta into Greensboro, North Carolina, “the largest refined products tank farm in the world,” Fenech said.
That connection then extends up the East Coast.
“... We move about 100 million gallons a day,” he added. “We supply in the ballpark of 40 percent of all the fuel that goes to the East Coast.”
Personally, “I have about
80 miles that I’m responsible for. That’s a small piece of Colonial’s footprint,” Fenech said.
Accidents happen
“Last year, in July, we had a leak at Sugar Limb,” the Colonia official said. “We had a valve that failed, a little 2-inch dial. And so we just sprayed product on the ground for about 18 hours until we could get it checked.
“The problem was not slowing the pipeline down. The pipeline was shut down in less than 10 minutes,” Fenech added. “The problem is the leak took place that far past the last block valve, and it was then 24 miles uphill to Knoxville from there.
“So all the pressure was just trying to roll back to that one spot. That was the reason it took so long. But we ended up buying that piece of property ... a farm in Loudon.”
Ever on guard for flow issues, “We will be looking at that property for at least the next 30 years,” Fenech said. “We have hundreds of test wells there. ...”
