Background
Pipeline abandonment[1] refers to the permanent removal from service of a pipeline. Pipelines have previously been abandoned in Canada and other jurisdictions. A review of the approved abandonment plans would result in a general understanding of the approaches taken. In addition, the analysis of available information, supplemented by site visits, would provide an assessment of abandonment outcomes and valuable information would be obtained on post-abandonment conditions and performance of the abandonment procedures that were used.
This issue was reviewed in the prior DNV Scoping Study, published by the National Energy Board, the predecessor to the current Canada Energy Regulator (CER).The PARSC 016 project was informed by the recommendations of the DNV Scoping Study.
Project Objective
The objective of this Project is to implement the recommendations from project PARSC 010, which was an initial surficial observation of the present-day state of areas where pipeline segments were abandoned in the Alberta Peace River region between 1972 and 1979. The segments were part of the Peace River mainline gas transmission system operated by NOVA Gas Transmission, an organization part of TransCanada Corporation (TC). The PARSC final report can be accessed at: https://www.ptac.org/previous-pipe-aband-programs-pr-mainline/