The federal government is eyeing the possibility of regulating the safety of gathering lines that serve the Marcellus Shale play in Pennsylvania, the head of the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administrator (PHMSA) told a Senate panel Monday.

Citing a recent visit to Pennsylvania to see some of the shale plays, “one of our concerns is that a great deal of gathering lines are going into place, some of them 20 inches [in diameter] or larger, high-pressure lines, that are currently not within our regulatory authority because they are in rural areas,” said PHMSA Administrator Cynthia Quarterman during a field hearing in Charleston, WV, aimed at examining pipeline safety requirements and regulations following a massive explosion on the Columbia Gas Transmission system in December.

“We are extremely concerned that we get ahead of that problem by beginning to know what is out there, where the pipelines are [located] and begin to regulate those lines in some way or fashion,” she told the Senate Commerce Committee, which held the hearing.

The hearing comes a month and a half after a rupture near Columbia Gas Pipeline’s Lanham Compressor Station in the rural community of Sissonville, WV, which is about 15 miles north of Charleston. The rupture of the gas line, which is owned by NiSource Inc., destroyed several homes and closed Interstate 77 for nearly a day (see Daily GPI, Dec. 12, 2012). There were no fatalities and no major injuries reported.

In the wake of the incident, regulators and lawmakers have called on pipeline operators to incorporate automatic and remote shut-off valves into their pipeline systems, as well as leak-detection techniques and better control room operations.

It took Columbia Gas nearly a full hour to shut off the gas following the rupture, said Deborah Hersman, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The pipeline ruptured at 12:41 p.m. on Dec. 11, and two minutes later the Columbia Gas operations center in Charleston received the first of three pressure drops from the Latham Compressor Station, which was located upstream of the rupture.

Over the next 10 minutes, 13 more pressure drop alerts were received in the Charleston control center, she said. Each alert was acknowledged by the controller, but it wasn’t until 12:53 p.m., when Columbia Gas received a call from Cabot Oil and Gas’ operation center in the area, that the pipeline began to understand that one of their pipelines had likely ruptured.

“By that time, the pressure on all three interconnected pipelines operated by Columbia had dropped by 100 psig [pounds per square inch],” Hersman said. She noted that the four valves were closed by 1:19 p.m. The valves had to be closed manually. The valves at the Latham Compressor Station weren’t shut off until 1:40 p.m., nearly an hour after the incident.

A preliminary report issued by the NTSB earlier this month confirmed that corrosion, which led to significant thinning of the pipeline wall, may have been responsible for the rupture (see Daily GPI, Jan. 17). The agency is continuing its investigation of the incident in Washington, DC. “Issues of particular interest…are integrity management, inspections, control center operations and automatic or remote shut-off- valves,” the agency said.

Susan Fleming, an official with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), noted that “our work has shown that automatic shut-off valves is a very effective way for improving response time.” However there is disagreement over where they should be located along a pipeline system.

The manual valves on the Columbia Gas system “actually require human beings turning a hand crank hundreds and hundreds of times with significant force to close those valves. That’s why it took so long to shut down some of those valves at Latham,” she said.

Like the National Fire Protection Association’s established response times for fire engines, PHMSA should establish “general metrics” for pipelines to respond to explosions and ruptures, the GAO believes. The agency could set guidelines on the amount of time an operator has to confirm an incident; arrive at the scene; close valves; and assess the situation.

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