President Bush signed into law last Tuesday a long-awaited bill that enacts tougher inspection and other safety standards for interstate natural gas and hazardous liquid pipelines.

The “Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002,” H.R. 3609, was passed by both houses of Congress in mid-November (See NGI, Nov.18). Tuesday’s signing climaxed nearly four years of fighting within Congress and intense outside lobbying by pipeline groups, such as the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America.

“I’m not saying this is the best thing since free beer,” said Martin Edwards, INGAA’s vice president of legislative affairs, but “we got the most reasonable bill that could be gotten out of this Congress.”

The tougher law comes on the heels of two deadly pipeline explosions in the past three years — a blast on a petroleum products line in Bellingham, WA, that killed three persons in 1999, and a rupture and subsequent flare-up on El Paso Natural Gas in New Mexico in mid-2000, which killed 12 members of two extended families.

The most controversial part of the new law deals with the inspection intervals for pipelines. It requires pipelines with the highest risk factors — or at least half of existing gas pipe facilities — to complete inspections within five years, and the remainder of the gas pipelines to be inspected within the next five years. The new law also requires pipes to be re-examined in seven years.

Other key provisions in the law will:

©Copyright 2002 Intelligence Press Inc. Allrights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republishedor redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without priorwritten consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.