The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to issue a final report Tuesday on the fatal natural gas pipeline rupture and explosion in San Bruno, CA, last year that killed eight people and destroyed a neighborhood. However, ahead of the report San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) on Friday proposed a multi-year modernization plan designed to make its natural gas transmission pipeline system one of the safest in the country.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last Wednesday issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, which seeks public comment on whether certain regulatory exemptions for pipelines constructed before 1970 should be eliminated and whether integrity management requirements for pipelines, which primarily apply to pipe segments in highly populated areas, should be strengthened and expanded (see related story).

PG&E filed its safety plan with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which is in the process of setting new, more stringent safety and performance requirements for natural gas utilities in the wake of the tragic San Bruno accident last September. PG&E’s plan outlines steps the utility intends to take over the next several years to rigorously verify and upgrade the integrity of all of its nearly 6,000 miles of gas transmission pipelines to meet strict new statewide safety standards.

PG&E’s planned measures include:

“This plan represents a clear break with the way PG&E and other gas utilities once approached pipeline safety,” said PG&E’s Nick Stavropoulos, executive vice president of gas operations. “Under the CPUC’s leadership, with PG&E’s full support, the state has taken lessons learned from several independent investigations of the San Bruno tragedy and adopted new standards to help ensure that such an accident never happens again. Our multi-year plan to test, verify and upgrade the integrity of our gas transmission pipelines will meet those rigorous standards and help California lead the natural gas industry in pipeline safety.”

Since the San Bruno tragedy, PG&E noted that it has undertaken several steps to make its system safer, including increased leak surveys and patrols; reduced pressure on some pipelines to increase the margin of safety; working to ensure the operating pressures of all pipelines across the system are appropriate for their location; pressure testing, replacing and conducting inline inspections on older pipelines; and creating a separate unit for gas operations under new leadership. In addition PG&E noted that it had hired “more than 150 new employees and contracted with dozens of expert gas operations consulting firms” and “improved our coordination with local emergency responders and launched a new online tool to let members of the public locate pipelines in their neighborhoods.”

After releasing another 3,000 pages of data in mid-August on the San Bruno incident, the NTSB is expected to report a final decision on the probable cause of the San Bruno tragedy when the board meets in Washington, DC. NTSB said it could add postings to the already voluminous dockets filed on its website, in addition to the ones released Aug. 15, that include a description and assessment of the pipeline integrity management and safety program conducted by PG&E on the segment of its Line 132 that failed Sept. 9.

The NTSB’s latest documents said PG&E conducted internal camera inspections of Line 132 nine different times between Sept. 29 and Oct. 28. The inline inspections covered various segments in and around the area where the rupture and explosion occurred.

The documents also included the acknowledgment that PG&E was “aware that there are some manufacturing and construction threats on Line 132, and that the pressure had been raised three consecutive times on the line. The issue of automatic shutoff values and remote control valves was also raised, showing that PG&E had repeatedly looked at installing more of them but never took much, if any, action.”

The NTSB documents cite the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in 2005 as taking PG&E to task for not following through on what its audit at the time identified as “the most significant integrity management program concern/issue.”

“PG&E had no process in place to evaluate automatic shutoff valves or remote control valves,” the CPUC said. “Furthermore, PG&E proposed in its IM plan to wait until December 2006 to develop this process.”

Nationally, industry leaders, including Questar Pipeline Co. CEO Allan Bradley, who is the current chairman of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), have called for a more comprehensive government-industry effort to create a “pipeline safety technology road map.”

PG&E gas experts spent the better part of a week earlier in August flying helicopters across Solano and Yolo counties, northeast of the San Francisco Bay Area, testing the reliability and accuracy of the new technology. Utility crews flew over PG&E easements where the utility had simulated leaks, false positives and decoys, all to see how the equipment could differentiate whether something was a leak. According to a report on the utility website, “preliminary results were encouraging.”

The company will now do a more thorough evaluation of the studies and hopes to have final results by mid-September. If the technology proves viable, the spokesperson said, PG&E would implement its use by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, a CPUC administrative law judge (ALJ) recently released a proposed decision outlining the procedures for eliminating current restrictions on the operating pressures of major PG&E natural gas transmission pipelines since San Bruno occurred. The ALJ also denied a recommendation by PG&E for raising future pipe pressures.

At the direction of the CPUC’s Executive Director Paul Clanon, PG&E has reduced operating pressure on a number of its transmission pipelines, including Line 132, which had the rupture last year. PG&E had asked the state regulatory commission to allow Clanon to raise pressures in certain parts of its transmission pipeline system. The San Francisco-based combination utility said that by November pressure on some pipelines will need to be raised to assure reliable service to PG&E gas customers.

ALJ Maribeth Bushey has recommended that the CPUC reject the PG&E motion. The utility had argued that it was appropriate for the CPUC to delegate authority to Clanon to raise operating pressures because the utility in virtually all cases would have proof of prior, complete pressure tests in any pipelines in heavily populated areas in which the pressure would be raised.

While going against PG&E’s specific motion, Bushey’s proposed decision does accommodate the utility’s request for what the ALJ called “an expedited procedure” to obtain authorization to lift pressure limitations for its transmission Line 300B coming out of Topock Compressor Station on the California-Arizona border.

Bushey proposes that PG&E come up with a “comprehensive timeline” for all natural gas transmission pipelines subject to pressure reductions on which the utility expects to seek permission to increase operating pressure. She said the CPUC subsequently will specify the procedure that will be used for these future requests.

The ALJ has proposed that PG&E file its data supporting a lifting of the pressure limits on Line 300B out of Topock by Sept. 12; and a hearing be held Sept. 19 on the request, followed by a proposed decision on Line 300B by Sept. 23 and a final decision by the five-member CPUC on Oct. 6.

©Copyright 2011Intelligence 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.