A former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said he is concerned about the federal government’s delay in issuing regulations to implement the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty and Jobs Creation Act, which President Obama signed into law in January 2012 (see Daily GPI,Jan. 4, 2012).

“I am concerned with recent pipeline tragedies and what’s being done to prevent future events and that implementation of the Pipeline Safety Act (PSA) and its associated regulations is taking far too long,” wrote Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) in a letter Wednesday to Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

“As oil and gas exploration and production continues to grow in the Bakken, Marcellus and Eagle Ford shale fields, more and more pipelines will be needed to take advantage of these domestic sources of energy. The rapid growth of pipelines serving shale oil and gas production and the continued degradation of existing pipelines likely will outpace your department’s ability to develop and oversee new and existing safety requirements,” he said.

Dingell asked DOT to respond to a series of questions by Dec. 31, including:

The PSA requires the DOT secretary to issue a rule on the use of automatic or remote-controlled shut-off valves or equivalent technology on new or replaced transmission pipelines by Jan. 3, 2014, Dingell said. And Section 5 of the PSA requires the DOT secretary to evaluate within 18 months whether integrity management system requirements should be expanded and where application of integrity management program requirements to more areas would mitigate the need for class location requirements.