Electrical Issue Causes Emergency Shutdown at Wyoming County Gas Compressor Station

• Marie Cusick
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  Marie Cusick was the Harrisburg reporter for StateImpact Pennsylvania.

A natural gas compressor station in Wyoming County had an emergency shutdown last night due to an electrical issue. Compressor stations are needed to pressurize gas to make it move through pipelines.
The Times Leader first reported on the shutdown: 

There was an emergency shutdown of a natural gas compressor station in Washington Township, Wyoming County, on Wednesday.
Colleen Connolly, spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said DEP was notified of an emergency shutdown of the Hirkey Compressor Station at about 8:30 p.m.

StateImpact Pennsylvania contacted PVR Partners, which owns the compressor station.
A spokesman for the company says there was never any threat to public safety. The shutdown was caused when a circuit board failed, and one of the facility’s monitoring systems spotted a problem.

“The stations are designed to be fail-safe ” said Steve Milbourne, PVR’s director of investor relations, “If it can’t verify that everything is fine, it’s designed to shut itself down. There was no physical problem. ”
This compressor station had just been put online in October 2012 and Milbourne said there has never been an issue with it. PVR operates compressor facilities which deliver natural gas to pipelines in six counties: Wyoming, Lycoming, Tioga, Bradford, Sullivan and Susquehanna.
Last March an explosion at a gas compressor station in Susquehanna County, owned by a different company, Williams Partners LP, blew a hole through the roof of the facility and shook homes as far as a half-mile away.

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