A natural gas storage facility exploded Wednesday in Mont Belvieu after a contractor struck an underground pipeline, officials said.
No injuries were reported. All facility workers had been accounted for, said Mont Belvieu city spokesman Brian Ligon.
The explosion sparked a large fire around 5 p.m. in the Lone Star NGL facility at 506 W. Winfree St. Firefighters were still working to suppress the flames as of 8 p.m. Wednesday night. The fire had dwindled significantly, and officials expected the fire to burn itself out overnight, according to a Facebook post from the city.
“MBFD and industrial units are continuing with suppression operations while the line bleeds out,” the city said. “We are very thankful that no plant employees or responders were injured during this incident or during the response.”
West Winfree Street and State Highway 146 remained closed late Wednesday.
Lone Star NGL is a subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer LP, one of the largest natural gas infrastructure companies in the U.S. Company spokeswoman Lisa Coleman told the Houston Chronicle that a contractor struck an underground pipeline at 4:45 p.m.
In addition to Mont Belvieu firefighters, the company’s own fire team responded to the incident. Coleman said there were no evacuations.
Energy Transfer and the Baytown Fire Department late Wednesday began conducting air monitoring. Results did not show any levels of concern, Coleman said.
“There will be an investigation into the cause of this incident,” Coleman said. “Updates will be provided as information becomes available.”
Ligon added that there was “no public threat” from the fire.
A 2016 Houston Chronicle investigation found there is a major chemical incident every six weeks in the Houston area.
The Lone Star facility stores and processes natural gas liquids, which include products like propane, butane and ethane. At the facility, natural gas liquids are separated into individual components through a process called fractionation. Transmission pipelines from the Permian Basin, Barnett Shale and East Texas make up the company’s Lone Star Express network, 535 miles of pipeline that ships natural gas liquids from shale plays to the Mont Belvieu storage and fractionation facility.
julian.gill@chron.com
erin.douglas@chron.com
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July 30, 2020 at 06:00AM
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