What you can’t see can hurt
ON A BLAZING HOT SUNDAY, just before the summer solstice, a deputy with the Cibola County, New Mexico, Sheriff’s Department noticed something awry at a natural gas pipeline compressor station just outside the Pueblo of Laguna. He called Transwestern Pipeline, the station’s operator, and urged the company to send someone. When technicians arrived, they found a broken sensing line, which caused a relief valve to fully open and start oozing natural gas, the fossil fuel that generates about 40% of the nation’s electricity.
Transwestern Pipeline shut down the line and repaired it, and within a couple of days, gas was flowing again. Power plants kept the air conditioners humming as extreme heat cooked the Southwest. The leaking gas never ignited, no one
