A natural gas leak in Saint-Basile-le-Grand: reconnect customers began

QMI agency

Sunday, 9 July, 2017 15:12

UPDATE
Sunday, 9 July, 2017 15:18

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SAINT-BASILE-LE-GRAND | The company Gaz Metro has started Sunday relighting of gas equipment of its 3,100 residential customers service for a broken pipe in Saint-Basile-le-Grand, in Montérégie, which occurred Thursday morning.

“Relighting of the equipment to the entire customer base will take a few days,” said the company on its web site Sunday morning. A spokeswoman, Stephanie Trudeau, stated in an interview with TVA News that the operation to reconnect customers could last until the middle of the week.

“To reconnect, it is necessary to pass device-by-device, this is the only way, said Ms. Trudeau. There can be hundreds of re-ignitions per day.”

Gaz Métro may proceed to reconnect customers with a solution that it has implemented during the end of the week.

“We use natural gas in a liquefied and when it is liquid you can carry 600 times more, so we transport it by truck and we started to inject our post at midnight on Saturday night, therefore, since this (Sunday) morning, there has already been a reconnection without the need to wait that our network is officially back in service,” said Ms. Trudeau.

Gaz Métro will by priority. The restaurants and shops, for example, are deemed to have priority and will therefore be reconnected first, followed by residential customers whose water heater runs on natural gas and other customers that use gas for heating their residences.

So, as of Sunday, teams of Gaz Métro have started to occur in the affected clients to proceed with the delivery of gas equipment. “Customers absent during our visit will be informed and will be invited to contact us to schedule the re-gas facilities,” said the company on its web site.

For what is the cause of the leak, Gaz Métro has identified the sealing of a flange that was defective. “We’re going to [determine] if the piece is elsewhere on our network, we will make a plan to know if one has to make proactive inspections”, said the spokesperson of the company VAT New.