The House should take a cue from the Senate’s much stricter pipeline safety reauthorization legislation, which calls for meticulous record-keeping, review and rulemakings with respect to expanding integrity management and potentially eliminating class locations for natural gas pipelines, an official with a a pipeline safety advocacy group said Thursday.

“The Senate [pipeline safety] bill includes an important section to address one of the apparent problems that came out after the San Bruno tragedy. Clearly, PG&E [Pacific Gas & Electric] did not have records that could verify the type of pipeline they had in the ground, so they were operating and inspecting that pipeline in inappropriate ways.

“How widespread this problem is in other companies is unclear, but the Senate bill would provide a means to determine this and prevent the companies from using a loophole in the current regulations to not report over-pressure events. For these reasons we ask that you include the Senate language in this [House] bill as well,” said Rick Kessler, vice president of the Pipeline Safety Trust, during a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power. The panel has held a number of hearings on the draft House pipeline safety bill in recent weeks.

Moreover, “expansion of integrity management is one of the most important things that can be done to help prevent future major incidents, and major pipeline industry groups such as the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America [INGAA] have supported such expansion,” he said.

“While we support [parts of] this draft bill, we prefer the language in the bill from the Senate Commerce Committee, which includes both a review of the need to expand integrity management and whether that expansion would allow for the elimination of class locations for gas pipelines. The Senate bill requires review and rulemaking for both ideas, whereas this bill this committee is drafting only requires study of the important idea of expansion of integrity management, but mandates class locations be eliminated.

“Class location rules currently protect the densest populations in the nation. Class location rules should not be eliminated unless and until industry has demonstrated to PHMSA’s [Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration] satisfaction that integrity management principles are in place and at least as protective,” Kessler said. The Senate Commerce Committee sent its pipeline safety reauthorization bill to the Senate floor in May (see Daily GPI, May 6).

He also objected to a provision in the draft House safety bill that would require new safety technology — automatic and remote-controlled shut-off values — to apply only to pipelines that are “constructed or entirely replaced” after a rule implementing the legislation goes into effect. “At a minimum a new rule should mandate the installation of automatic valves on all pipelines in high-consequence areas.

“Many existing pipelines, like the one that failed in San Bruno, are at least as much of a concern as new pipelines. There are already hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission pipelines in existence and only a very small percentage of mileage is added to that total each year,” Kessler said.

“We support the increase in potential civil penalties, although we think potential penalties should be available for any violation, so we do not think it is necessary to create a whole new category for major consequence violations,” as is proposed in the House bill, he said.

“If it is decided to create such a new and unnecessary category of civil violations, then the addition of the words ‘knowingly and willfully’ in this section makes the burden of proof for these violations the same as for criminal violations. This burden of proof is very high, and in practice, would render this new section useless. In the entire history of the federal government’s regulation of pipeline safety there has been only one criminal prosecution, for the Bellingham [WA] incident…There were many civil penalties assessed…in Carlsbad, NM, where 12 persons were killed,” but no criminal prosecution was undertaken.

Kessler called for the words “knowingly and willfully” to be removed from the House pipeline safety bill.

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