AUGUSTA — Confusion about who owned a natural gas line where an air leak blew off a manhole cover Tuesday night has highlighted a predicament of having two competing firms install pipelines in the city.
There are now 18 city streets where Summit Natural Gas of Maine and Maine Natural Gas are allowed to have pipe, according to a Kennebec Journal review of city records.
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The leak Tuesday night on Arsenal Street was later determined to occur in a section of Summit Natural Gas of Maine’s pipeline south of the old MaineGeneral Medical Center building. No one was injured, but for most of an hour the incident had city fire crews and police treating the line as if it were gas-charged and potentially explosive.
They called both Summit and Maine Natural Gas to send crews to the scene without knowing for a time exactly whose pipeline had failed. The city said Tuesday it would be improving record sharing with first responders on the companies’ lines.
City records show both companies are allowed to have pipe on Arsenal Street, one of 18 streets they’re both approved for, along with Western Avenue, Civic Center Drive, Sewall Street and other well-traveled roads.
Maine Natural Gas, which turned on its pipeline in late October, called attention to the confusion that could create in an emergency, earlier this year. Summit’s network hasn’t been powered up with gas, but the company has said it wants to turn it on by mid-December
On Wednesday, Michael Duguay, Summit’s director of business development, said the air leak occurred because an improper cap fitted to the end of the section of pipeline on Arsenal Street was blown off during an air pressure test of the section. Companies test capacity of the network by pumping air in past the pressure level necessary to carry gas, holding it for hours.
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