The Senate Commerce Committee yesterday voted out pipelinesafety reauthorization legislation that the natural gas pipelineindustry is billing as a “gross overreaction” to an explosionbrought on by a rupture in a products pipeline last June.

“The natural gas industry is really frustrated because we’rebeing dragged down with the products line,” a gas pipeline sourceremarked. “Am I allowed to curse?” he quipped when asked to commenton the committee’s bill. “It was not the happiest of moments. Itwas a mess.” Citizen groups called the committee’s action a”modest” or “small first step” toward ensuring safer interstatepipelines.

The legislation, if not drastically changed in conferencecommittee or on the Senate floor, “could frustrate a lot ofefforts” to build new interstate gas pipes, the pipe source said.Some pipeline insiders, however, doubt the committee’s legislationwill ever see the Senate floor this year since it will take aunanimous consent of all the senators to bring it up. The HouseCommerce Committee marked up a “simple reauthorization” bill morethan a year ago – prior to Bellingham.

What was expected to have been “routine” pipeline safetylegislation in the Senate turned into a “substantive” measure inthe wake of a pipeline-related explosion that left three dead inBellingham, WA, a year ago, said Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA), aleading proponent of pipeline safety reform, during mark-up of thecommittee’s bill Thursday.

The final committee legislation, S. 4238, reflected many of thereforms proposed in three separate Senate bills, including oneintroduced by Chairman John McCain (R-AZ), and a series ofamendments that were acted on yesterday.

Pipelines lost a key battle to block states from sharingoversight over interstate natural gas and hazardous liquid lineswith the federal government. Sens. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and JohnBreaux (D-LA) tried to limit the states’ authority to “inspection”only, removing the provision that would give them “oversight” powerover interstates. But their amendment lost by one vote.

Awarding states such power over interstate pipelines made nosense, Brownback argued, particularly when most of the existingpipeline-related problems were on lines that are under statejurisdiction. Moreover, he said such action would lead to a”patchwork” of differing state standards for interstates to follow.Breaux argued that the committee’s bill violated the interstatecommerce clause of the Constitution, which precludes states frominterfering in interstate activities.

“That’s a fantastic argument,” countered Gorton. Under thelegislation, he said the states’ authority would be kept in checkby the Department of Transportation (DOT). In other words, “I’msaying the state would only be able to do what [the DOT] allows itto do.”

The defeat of the Brownback and Breaux amendment “was terriblyfrustrating” for interstate gas pipelines, noted the pipelinesource. “We just have a major problem with the way the committeewants to exercise state and local control over interstates.”

The Senate legislation also would require individual pipelinesto consult with state and local officials about their integrityplans. So if a pipeline system traverses 12 states, it would haveto meet with state and local officials in every state.

“That doesn’t make sense. You can’t consult with 2,000 stateofficials. You aren’t going to have a lot of pipelines carryingnatural gas” then, said Breaux, who sought to alter the provision.His effort, however, failed.

“Now that’s absurd,” said Martin Edwards of the InterstateNatural Gas Association of America (INGAA), referring to pipesbeing required to meet with officials in each state. In a preparedstatement, INGAA President Jerald V. Halvorsen said the group was”disappointed” by the committee’s action, but he thanked Sens.Brownback and Breaux for their efforts — albeit unsuccessful —to make the legislation “more balanced.”

Brownback also lost out in his effort to squelch the creation oflocal citizen advisory committees to address pipe safety standards.He said he was concerned this would lead to 50 differentcommittees, none of which would include pipelines. Instead, heproposed that the location of the meetings of DOT’s two existingtechnical safety standards committees (one for gas and one forliquids) rotate between the five regions of the Office of PipelineSafety (OPS) throughout the year. This would help to get pipesafety issues out to the entire nation, he said. Also, he preferredthe existing technical committees because their membership was morediverse: five members from industry; five state and localofficials; and five from the general public.

The Brownback amendment was “right on target,” said Breaux. Heagreed the local advisory committee set-up wouldn’t be “very fair”since no pipelines would be represented. Even Gorton, who favoredcitizen advisory committees, said pipelines should be on them. Hetried to allay Brownback’s concern about 50 different advisorycommittees being created. At most, Gorton saw the DOT allowing twoor three of them to be organized.

Another amendment, which was introduced by McCain and passed,would require pipeline employees who refuse to cooperate with aNational Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) probe of an accident tobe either relieved of their duties during the investigation orreassigned to other tasks. This “does not constitute a federalmandate that [an uncooperative] employee should be fired,” McCainsaid.

Sen. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, the ranking Democraton the committee, initially objected to the amendment, but lateragreed with it after McCain explained his reasoning for theinitiative. “…I can see now what you’re getting at,” notedHollings.

But Breaux couldn’t be swayed. He said pipeline employees refuseto talk to the NTSB because criminal law would hold them criminallyliable if they are shown to be negligent. “We are making theproblem worse,” he said, adding the best way to get pipe employeesto open up was to change the criminal statute.

In approving the amendment, some lawmakers said they wereconcerned they would be passing premature judgment on pipelineemployees, and interfering with their “due process” rights.”There’s not a judgment here of guilt or innocence,” McCain assuredthem. To allay these fears, he asked Breaux to work with him torefine the language of his amendment before it goes to the Senatefloor.

After citing his frustration over the OPS’s failure to takestrong enforcement actions against interstate pipelines, Rep. JohnKerry (D-MA) proposed the committee uncap the amount of civilpenalties that judges could impose on pipelines that are found tobe negligent. His amendment passed.

Kerry said stronger enforcement action at the judicial level wasneeded because OPS seldom imposes fines on pipelines anymore, andeven when it does, it has a poor record of actually collecting thepenalties. Moreover, the agency doesn’t even require hazardousliquids pipelines to report small spills, he noted, and it hasfailed to implement half of the standards required by Congress.

Also adopted was an amendment proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)requiring the results of interstate pipeline inspections to beposted on the Internet. It further calls for the OPS to publiclyreport the actions it takes to correct safety problems onpipelines. The committee’s bill also would provide protection forwhistle-blowers who report pipeline safety violations to thefederal government.

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