U.S. fines El Paso Corp., subsidiary $2.3 million
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The Transportation Department said today that it has fined the El Paso Corp. and a Colorado subsidiary $2.3 million for safety violations in connection with a pipeline explosion in Wyoming three years ago that killed one worker and sent a giant fireball hundreds of feet into the air.
The fine is the largest it has ever levied against a pipeline company, the department said.
On Nov. 11, 2006, a bulldozer working on construction of the Rockies Express Pipeline project struck and ruptured a buried 36-inch natural gas pipeline owned by an El Paso subsidiary. The rupture caused an explosion and fire that scorched 600 acres. The bulldozer operator — Bobby Ray Owens, Jr., 52, of Louisiana — was killed.
The accident took place southwest of Cheyenne and about two miles north of the Colorado border in a rural area with no structures nearby.
An investigation by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration found that the pipeline hadn’t been located and marked according to federal safety regulations, the department said.
“Federal requirements are in place to provide protections for America’s most important assets -- its citizens,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. “The Department will hold pipeline operators accountable for the safety of those who live and work in the vicinity of their systems, and negligence will not be tolerated.”
-- Associated Press