As part of our recent consent order with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Colonial Pipeline is required to provide an updated released volume estimate within 30 days of the final agreement.
Since this release was first identified on August 14, 2020, Colonial Pipeline has remained steadfast in our commitment to recovering free product while protecting human health and the environment. Our work at this location over the past two years has been guided by science and engineering – principles that will be foundational to our efforts as product recovery and environmental remediation advance.
Working closely with state regulators on the recovery and response effort has been a priority for Colonial, and we are pleased to have reached an agreement with the state to provide the released volume estimate and the methodology used to arrive at this updated estimate. Following extensive operational data collection and analysis, Colonial determined July 27, 2020, as the start date of this release. This date was validated by a third-party expert and allowed us to further analyze the operational data to estimate an updated estimated released volume.
Colonial has recovered more than 35,500 barrels to date, and we now estimate the released volume to be ~47,600 barrels (2 million gallons). Our commitment to product recovery is evidenced by the volume recovered to date, which is approximately 75% of the updated release estimate. We will be here for as long as it takes to remediate the location.
While the estimated released volume has been updated, the extensive 385-plus subsurface monitoring and recovery well network we have in place is working as designed. Data also confirms product remains in the general vicinity of the release area and ongoing testing (in place since August 2020) has confirmed no impacts to water supply wells.
As part of holding ourselves accountable, we have applied lessons learned from this event across our operations. For example, following the event in August 2020, we identified segments of our mainlines with previous repairs similar to the type at Huntersville (called a segmented Type A sleeve) and converted them all to pressure-containing Type B Sleeves. In each of these conversions, no petroleum product was observed in the soil. The total cost of measures regarding Type A sleeve conversions (including both stacked and segmented Type A Sleeves) means a proactive investment of more than $50 million.
Colonial Pipeline remains committed to working closely with NCDEQ, county and community leaders as recovery efforts move forward. We deeply appreciate the patience of this community, and we will continue to work to earn back their trust through our actions on the ground.
