Although often on different sides of the fence at FERC and onCapitol Hill, major producers have rallied to defend interstate gaspipelines against allegations that painted them and other pipes asticking “time bombs.”

A USA Today article, headlined “When Pipelines Are Time Bombs: 2Million Miles of Them Deliver Potential Catastrophe Every Day,”reported there were 3,917 liquid fuel spills and natural gas leaksby pipelines during the 1990s, roughly one a day. The incidents,mostly involving local distribution company (LDC) gas lines,resulted in 201 deaths, 2,826 injuries and $778 million in propertydamage.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who has sponsored the Pipeline SafetyAct of 2000 in Congress, provided even bleaker figures. Since 1986,she reported there have been 5,700 pipeline accidents, resulting in325 deaths and 1,500 injuries. “They have shattered communitiesfrom coast to coast,” she said during a Senate Commerce Committeefield hearing on pipeline safety legislation in Bellingham, WA, aweek ago.

Bellingham was the site of a major product pipeline rupture andsubsequent explosion last summer, which left three dead. Althoughthe incident involved a product line, the public’s cry for greatergovernment oversight has been aimed at all kinds of energypipelines, including gas delivery systems. “There are literallyhundreds of ‘Bellinghams’ out there, and there are hundreds morewaiting to happen,” Murray warned.

Her pipeline safety legislation has pipeline companies quiteworried because it would, among other things, expand thesafety-inspection authority of states over all types of pipes. Thatwould mean pipes would be hit with a double whammy — safetyinspections by states and the federal government.

Responding to the USA Today story, the Natural Gas SupplyAssociation (NGSA) countered that gas pipelines were considered”the nation’s safest method of transporting fuel.” It remindedcritics that the gas industry spends more than $2 billion a year onsafety, and that a “great majority” of gas pipeline accidents weredue to careless digging by third-party contractors. The industryspearheaded the drive for a national one-call law, which was inenacted in 1998, to address this problem, the producers’ groupsaid.

But the claim that pipelines are the “safest form” oftransportation for fuel falls short, said Lois Epstein, seniorengineer with the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington D.C. It”ignores the environmental damage caused by pipeline ruptures andshifts attention from what Congress and [the OPS] office could bedoing now to make pipelines safer.”

Richard B. Felder, associate administrator for pipeline safetyat the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Research and SpecialPrograms Administration, which oversees OPS, has come under heavyattack in the wake of the Bellingham explosion. Jim Hall, chairmanof the National Transportation Safety Board, gave Felder’s officedeserves a “grade of F,” according to the USA Today article. Henoted the OPS has been the “most frustrating area” that he’s had todeal with during his term as chairman.

Moreover, the Inspector General of DOT turned up severalshortcomings in the inspection practices and training of OPSpipeline inspectors during a recent internal review, which wasconducted at the request of Sen. Murray.

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