Porter Ranch
| Porter Ranch | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Location in Los Angeles County
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| Basic data | |||
| State : | United States | ||
| State : | California | ||
| County : | Los Angeles County | ||
| Coordinates : | 34 ° 17 ′ N , 118 ° 34 ′ W | ||
| Time zone : | Pacific ( UTC − 8 / −7 ) | ||
| Residents : | 30,571 (as of 2008 ) | ||
| Postal code : | 91326 | ||
| Website : | www.prnc.org | ||
Porter Ranch is a district of Los Angeles in the northwest of the San Fernando Valley with around 30,000 inhabitants. Porter Ranch is bordered by the Santa Susana Mountains to the west, northwest, and north , Granada Hills to the northeast and east, Northridge to the southeast and south, and Chatsworth to the southwest .
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Aliso Canyon gas leak
Near Porter Ranch is the Aliso Canyon underground natural gas storage facility , the second largest natural gas storage facility in the western United States. This was set up in 1973; before that, oil had been produced there since 1954 . The operator is Southern California Gas Company (SoCal)
On October 23, 2015, the operator discovered a leak in the pressurized storage facility at a depth of over 2,400 meters from which large amounts of methane and ethane leaked in the following months .
Since the odorant mercaptan is added to the gas for safety reasons , many residents complained of health problems. Several thousand families were then evacuated. The Los Angeles County imposed on 15 December 2015, the state of emergency in Porter Ranch. As a precaution, an overflight ban was imposed, even if, according to experts, there was no risk of explosion. Several schools were closed. In early January 2016, the governor of California also declared a state of emergency over the affected area.
After seven unsuccessful attempts to seal the leak, the gas release was temporarily stopped on February 11, 2016 after 112 days. The leak was finally sealed with concrete on February 18, 2016. A total of around 97,100 tons of methane and 7,300 tons of ethane were released, which corresponds to about 3% of the storage capacity.
Since methane is a powerful greenhouse gas , the accident had a significant impact on California's carbon footprint. Calculated over 100 years, the climate impact of the gases released was roughly equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 572,000 American cars.
Web links
- Infrared Footage Shows Just How Terrifyingly Bad California's Gas Leak Is (infrared image of the methane leak )
- Infographics: This Is How Much the California Gas Leak Is Hurting the Planet
- Aliso Canyon gas leak (Wikipedia article on the Aliso Canyon gas leak)
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/06/us/california-porter-ranch-gas-leak-emergency/
- ↑ http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/erdgasspeicher-ist-undicht-gasleck-in-kalifornia-gouverneur-ruft-notstand-aus/12793192.html
- ↑ Huge amounts of methane: gas leak in LA - California declares a state of emergency. In: Spiegel Online . January 7, 2016, accessed June 10, 2018 .
- ↑ California: Gas leak in Porter Ranch provisionally sealed. In: Zeit Online. February 12, 2016, accessed February 12, 2016 .
- ↑ Conley et al .: Methane emissions from the 2015 Aliso Canyon blowout in Los Angeles, CA . In: Science 351, Issue 6279, (2016), 1317-1320, doi: 10.1126 / science.aaf2348 .