Sinopec oil pipeline blast kills 35 in eastern China

[snookypookums]

[IMG]http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20131122&t=2&i=814212227&w=&fh=&fw=&ll=700&pl=378&r=CBRE9AL0WZE00[/IMG]
[I]A man stands next to an overturned car on a street damaged by an explosion at a Sinopec Corp oil pipeline in Qingdao, Shandong province November 22, 2013.

[/I][QUOTE](Reuters) - [B]An explosion in a Sinopec Corp oil pipeline killed 35 people in Qingdao in eastern China on Friday, causing a blaze that took several hours to bring under control and halting operations at a major oil port, media and ship brokers said.[/B]

Qingdao is one of China's largest crude oil import terminals, supplying at least two major Sinopec refineries -- the Qingdao plant and Sinopec Qilu Petrochemical Corp -- as well as many small, independent refineries.

A Chinese trader said the explosion would disrupt crude flows into China as the blast involved a major pipeline supplying several refineries.[/QUOTE]

[URL]http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/22/us-sinopec-blast-idUSBRE9AL08E20131122[/URL]

[Maxumym]

Oh fuck. I'm studying for a degree in Oil&Gas pipeline transportation and storage and I hope this is exactly the kind of stuff I will be able to prevent from happening.

[Samg381]

This shit scares me.

[bord2tears]

[QUOTE=maxumym;42956993]Oh fuck. I'm studying for a degree in Oil&Gas pipeline transportation and storage and I hope this is exactly the kind of stuff I will be able to prevent from happening.[/QUOTE]

My friend's dad works over in China as an engineer at Chevron - apparently the government there contracted Chevron's help because of incidents like this.

[Darkride196]

After i got my doctorate in engineering, i found a job and i was part of a contractor that was sent to china. It's a pretty nice place and i helped engineer new parts for pipelines like these, although the ones i engineered were carrying water and other supplies.

[Vipa]

I wonder if this tragedy could be attributed to the quality of fire suppression systems or backblast inhibitors used in the pipeline. Not to say that china uses inferior quality pressure regulation systems but by looking at the pictures and the length of the pipe damage i'm curious to why the explosion was carried that far. Either way i'm not an engineer so dunno.

Edit: Brother said these systems don't apply on specific lengths of pipeline due to cost reasons, but considering it was going through a population dense area i wonder why they didn't put them in for safety reasons.