The House last week overwhelmingly passed a long-overdue pipeline safety bill that would require natural gas pipelines to carry out inspections less frequently than what the Senate has proposed.

By a vote of 423 to four, House lawmakers voted out the “Pipeline Infrastructure Protection to Enhance Security and Safety Act,” HR 3609, a compromise of the two pipe safety bills that emerged from the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The measure requires gas, hazardous liquids and product pipelines to conduct baseline inspections within 10 years, and calls for re-inspections to be done every seven years afterward.

The Secretary of Transportation would have 18 months after enactment of the legislation to issue regulations with respect to inspections, and a year later the clock would start on the 10-year deadline, according to the House bill.

The gas pipeline industry favors the House measure over the Senate version, which proposes baseline inspections to be carried out within five years, and re-inspections to be done at five-year intervals. Lawmakers will attempt to reconcile the differences in the two measures during a conference on the omnibus energy bill, and include pipe safety in final energy legislation.

“We think it [the House bill] is an outstanding compromise,” said Martin Edwards, vice president of legislative affairs for the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), which represents gas pipelines. “We are pleased we could get such a strong bipartisan agreement” on the two House committee bills, he noted, adding that “nearly everything [in the House-passed bill] was heavily negotiated.”

INGAA and its pipeline members are opposed to the Senate bill’s requirements for baseline inspections and re-inspections because “we don’t think it’s practical or justifiable,” Edwards said.

Among its other provisions, the House bill also calls on the Secretary of Transportation to develop and implement a research, development and demonstration program to assure the integrity of pipelines; pipelines to institute programs to ensure their operator-personnel are properly qualified and comply with uniform standards to be issued by the Department of Transportation; beefs up both civil and criminal penalties for pipeline safety violators; and addresses security measures for pipes, as well as one-call notification.

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