Near miss to underground ethylene pipe - issue 211

A ‘near miss’ to a potentially major environmental incident occurred when contractors excavated a trench (3 metres deep) 20 metres from a major underground ethylene pipeline running between England and Scotland. It was estimated that, if the pipeline had been ruptured, serious property damage within a radius of 5km and a flash fire of about 500 metre span would have occurred.

Lessons learned relate to: contractors taking insufficient notice of ground markers; inadequate standards for the protection of underground plant; lack of understanding of the communications network that was in place.