The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) has alerted Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta that it has re-established a “Cold-War vintage” task force to oversee the security and safety of interstate natural gas pipelines in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes.

The task force, which already is up and running, is comprised of the nearly 30 INGAA pipeline members, and is chaired by Greg Bilinski of Duke Energy. INGAA abandoned its original security task force about five to six years ago, when there “wasn’t a perceived need for it,” and then re-instituted a similar task force to address the Y2K concerns, said Martin Edwards, director of legislative affairs for the group. “We’re building off of that effort.”

One area that needs immediate attention is the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) rules that prohibited pipelines from conducting aerial inspections immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, he said. That these planes were “grounded was kind of ironic because they [the pipes] used the flights to check for potential security problems.” Edwards reported a few “friendly F-16s even showed up” to escort a couple of planes that were conducting aerial pipeline inspections back to the nearest airports.

The FAA has a “very confused policy on whether flights [performing security inspections] should be allowed or not” when commercial jetliners are grounded, he noted. “We need to have an understanding with the FAA that aerial flights are important to enhance security.”

Overall, the task force will address “improving security practices, enhancing secure communications within the industry and between the industry and the government, assessing state-of-the-art encroachment monitoring technology and enhancing public participation in reporting unusual activities along the pipeline route. We also plan to evaluate and improve interaction with the federal, state and local governments to enhance security,” wrote Duke Energy’s Fred J. Fowler, chairman of the INGAA Board’s Task Force on Pipeline Safety, in a letter to Mineta Friday.

“On Sept. 11, we did ask [the Office of Pipeline Safety] to take the national pipeline mapping system off of their web site and they did so…We need to work together to be more sensitive to what information regarding our pipeline systems is made available to the general public and in what format,” he said.

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