By paNOW Staff

SaskEnergy removing over-odourized gas

Oct 1, 2015 | 9:42 AM

People in the Melfort, Tisdale and Nipawin areas will soon be able to inhale air that doesn’t smell like rotten eggs.

An equipment malfunction at the SaskEnergy compressor station in St. Louis Tuesday allowed too much of a stinky odour into the natural gas system.

SaskEnergy’s senior communications officer Casey MacLeod reiterated the odour is not harmful.

“We put this [odour] in for a safety precaution into our gas at all times,” said Macleod. “That’s what produces the rotten egg smell that people will notice if there ever is a natural gas leak in the area and this section of the system just malfunctioned and put too much in.

“So while it isn’t very pleasant to smell, it’s absolutely not harmful to you. It is just an excessive addition to what is a safety feature to our system.”

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MacLeod said it’s only a matter of time before the smell is completely gone. She said SaskEnergy did some additional natural gas flaring at a rural station Wednesday to speed up the removal of the excessively odourized gas from the system.

The company was still getting a fairly large number of calls about the odour Thursday morning, but some progress had been made.

“We were able to make good progress responding to the calls yesterday,” said MacLeod, “so that number is significantly lower than it was yesterday. As the excessive odourant has continued to work through our system we are now seeing that the majority of our calls are coming from the Nipawin area.”

MacLeod said SaskEnergy stopped running gas through the St. Louis station while the company worked to rectify the situation.

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by paNOW Staff

SaskEnergy removing over-odourized gas

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