Operators, Monitors Call on Congress to Make Pipeline Safety a Priority Again

Of course, pipeline operators and independent monitors, including those concerned with carbon dioxide and methane emissions, didn’t agree on what increased federal engagement should be, but all concurred that regulations must be updated and better enforced.

It’s been five years since Congress reviewed federal safety and environmental standards for the nation’s 3.3 million miles of oil and gas pipelines and nearly 18 months since the agency, created in 2004 to enforce them, was reauthorized to modernize regulations.

During that time, demand for natural gas has dramatically increased, while environmental regulations grew during the Biden administration, which the industry maintains have nothing to do with the safe transport of energy-generating liquids and have led to delays and confusion.

Pipeline operators told the Surface Transportation, Freight, Pipelines, and Safety Subcommittee that reauthorizing the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is essential in implementing President Donald Trump’s energy policies.

They called on Congress to update statutes, standardize damage-prevention processes, streamline inspection programs, create a regulatory regime that advances technologies such as artificial intelligence, develop standards to accommodate transport of hydrogen and carbon dioxide, increase penalties for vandalism and eco-terrorism, and stiffen cybersecurity safeguards.

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Safety is paramount, Liquid Energy Pipeline Association President and Chief Executive Officer Andy Black testified, noting pipelines “are 13 times safer than both trains and trucks, with pipelines experiencing only one incident for over 720 million gallons delivered” and that pipeline “incidents” are down 13 percent since regulations were last reviewed.

However, countered Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram, “Since the subcommittee’s last markup in July 2019, 67 people have been killed and 182 hospitalized from pipeline incidents.”

“The past two years have been the deadliest,” with 30 deaths related to pipeline incidents, he said.

Caram said among improvements, the Pipeline Safety Trust, established in 1999 as an independent safety monitor, supports mandating pipelines, especially distribution lines that feed power to homes and businesses, to include fire shut-off valves and meters to detect natural gas and methane leaks.

“Even the best regulations, however, can be meaningless without robust enforcement,” he said, and that begins with reauthorizing the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).

Good idea, committee chair Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said.

“One maxim of politics is personnel is policy,” Cruz said, noting that the Biden administration didn’t nominate a PHMSA administrator, which he called “a shameful dereliction of duty.”

Priorities, Threats

Cruz said the agency, which he said has become “a climate change agency” under the Biden administration, must refocus on pipeline safety.

He accused federal agencies under the previous administration of pushing the climate agenda instead of fulfilling their purposes. They “not only duplicating the work of other agencies, but disregarding the explicit statutory language that Congress carefully negotiated,” he said.

An example of “overreach” under the preceding administration, he said, is a natural gas leak detection and repair rule that imposed regulations on underground natural gas storage and liquefied natural gas facilities “despite the statute explicitly not including” it among issues it was to address.

American Petroleum Institute Vice President of Midstream Policy Robin Rorick said among other issues is creating “an official status” for idle, off-line pipelines, which now must meet the same reporting requirements as active ones do. He said the change created a bureaucratic burden for operators.

Black said Congress must reauthorize demonstration programs approved under a special permit process. He accused the Biden administration of compromising the process by requiring research and development projects to meet National Environmental Protection Act standards.

“Congress created special permits for a good reason, right?” he said. “And so this has been a way for pipeline operators to go to PHMSA and say, ‘I’ve got an equivalent way to do this that’s different and that’s better,’ but PHMSA has ruined the special permit program” by “applying unrelated conditions and PHMSA and was taking forever” in reviewing proposals.

All said there should be no tolerance and stiff penalties for pipeline vandalism by those they called “eco-terrorists.”

Black recounted “a number of dangerous and destructive situations from attacks on pipelines” since 2016. “And sadly, in 2022, there was a movie called ‘How To Blow Up A Pipeline’ that was released nationwide,” he said.

Rorick said peaceful pipeline protesters are one thing, while vandals and those who seek to harm others are another concern altogether.

“We’re not talking about squashing First Amendment rights to speech,” he said. “What we’re talking about are things like” a May 9 incident in Tennessee where an “individual tampered with a gas line” that forced 430 residents to evacuate homes, shut down businesses, and paralyzed a community.

Leger said when a damaged pipeline is suddenly shut down, “cascading events” ripple through a community, “where you have hospitals, critical care facilities, local police departments without gas, that can no longer protect us and take care of our citizens.”

Cruz said Congress intends to stiffen penalties for such acts, noting he is co-sponsoring with Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) a bill to “expressly address eco-terrorists who tamper with pipelines or damage pipelines under construction [and] the unauthorized turning of pipeline valves, a major safety concern that threatens the very environment eco-terrorists claim they’re trying to protect.”