The House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday approved by voice vote a pipeline safety reauthorization bill that calls on the Department of Transportation (DOT) to review the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) recommendation for longer intervals between safety reassessments of natural gas pipelines, and to transmit “appropriate legislative changes” to Congress.

The bipartisan measure (HR 5782) approved by the House Energy and Commerce panel was a substitute version of legislation that was passed by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in July. The bill would replace the existing pipeline safety law, the Pipeline Safety Act of 2002, which expires within days.

The bill requires the DOT to report on how it would implement the conclusions reached by the GAO in a report that was issued earlier this month. Specifically, the GAO recommended that the federal government consider revising the existing pipeline safety law to allow natural gas pipelines to reinspect their systems for safety threats at intervals based on the risks of individual pipelines rather than at a fixed interval of seven years for the entire industry, as is currently required (see Daily GPI, Sept. 12).

The revisions, if adopted, would allow the DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to establish maximum reassessment intervals greater than seven years for less-risky pipelines, and shorter reassessment intervals for riskier gas pipelines, the GAO said in its report.

But the Bush administration already dealt with this issue in its own pipe reauthorization bill, which was unveiled last spring, and supports doing a rulemaking that would extend the reinspection intervals for gas pipelines based on risk, said Martin Edwards, vice president of legislative affairs for the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America.

“We’re…frustrated that the House bill isn’t dealing with the reassessment issue” head on, he told NGI. This is a typical “post-BP reaction,” according to Edwards. “Even though the two issues aren’t related, everything is linked in the minds of Congress.”

Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the committee’s ranking Democrat, appears to be “fairly open” to exploring longer reassessment intervals, Edwards said. “I support further examination of this issue,” Dingell said at the mark-up hearing. Congress has an “obligation to verify the conclusions in the GAO report” and to make sure that “public safety is not compromised by any change” in the pipeline safety law, he noted.

Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) said the portion of the measure addressing reassessment intervals for gas pipelines “needs more work.” The 2002 pipe safety law’s requirement that gas pipelines conduct reinspections every seven years was a “political compromise” between five and 10 years, and “does not represent the consensus of safety experts,” he noted.

The committee needs to “do more due diligence to find out exactly what the GAO’s recommendations mean to the real world before we change the reassessment interval,” Green said. He called for Congress to revisit the issue in its next session.

Green agreed with one of the GAO’s recommendations — to revise the definition of a reportable incident on a natural gas pipeline — and offered an amendment to do this. A reportable incident currently is defined as one in which property damage, including the cost of gas lost, meets a threshold of $50,000. The definition has not been adjusted over the years to take into account the increase in gas prices, and thus has resulted in many more gas pipeline incidents being reported to the DOT.

The Green amendment, which the committee adopted, would use a volume-based threshold to define reportable incidents, rather than a cost threshold.

The bill also seeks to strengthen states’ one-call programs by setting new civil penalties for violators. In addition, it establishes a grant program to help states develop stronger programs to prevent excavation damage to pipelines.

While the DOT already is in full swing with its integrity management program for natural gas transmission lines, the bill would require the DOT to implement an integrity management program for gas distribution pipelines within one year of enactment of the measure.

Moreover, the measure seeks to increase transparency at the department. It would require the DOT to publish a monthly summary of its enforcement actions involving natural gas and hazardous liquids pipelines.

House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) said his goal is to get the bill approved by the House before Congress adjourns this year. The Senate has not taken any action on pipeline reauthorization legislation this year. However, plans called for the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee to unveil a pipe safety bill either late Wednesday or early Thursday, a Capitol Hill aide said.

©Copyright 2006Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.