The U.S. House of Representatives passed a pipeline safety bill, HR3609, on July 23. This legislation, which passed 423-4, is less stringent than a measure passed by the Senate, but advocates say the two bills are close enough that a compromise is likely in a House-Senate conference committee.

This bill re-authorizes the Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS), which has not been done since 1996, and provides funds through 2006. It also has 22 major modifications to the Pipeline Safety Statutes. Most modifications establish tight deadlines for OPS to carry out mandates ranging from studies, establishing interagency advisory committees and developing security regulations to comprehensive reporting to Congress.

Pipeline safety advocates have pushed for a bill regulating the nation’s 2.2 million miles of pipelines since a 1999 rupture killed three people in Bellingham, Wash. An August 2000 failure and explosion killed 12 people in Carlsbad, N.M., and two more people were killed in pipeline accidents last year.

The House bill would require pipeline inspections at least once in the next 10 years and every seven years after that. The Senate version requires operators to inspect pipelines at least once every five years. Both bills impose higher penalties on violators with fines reaching a maximum of $1 million, allow states to regulate interstate pipelines and provide whistle-blower protection for those who identify safety problems.

Some groups representing pipeline operators support the bill with reservations. Most industry representatives and advocates feel the bills are a fair compromise.

NTSB investigation

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has completed its investigation and report of the rupture of the Potomac Electric Power Company’s (Pepco) pipeline at the Chalk Point Generating Station in Maryland. The failure occurred the morning of April 7, 2000, and the release was not discovered and addressed by the contract operating company, Support Terminal Services Inc., until late afternoon.

As a result, some 140,400 gallons of fuel oil were released into the surrounding marsh and subsequently into the Patuxent River. No injuries were caused by the accident, which cost approximately $71 million for environmental response and clean-up operations.

The report discusses the following major safety issues: the sufficiency of the evaluation procedures for pipe wrinkles; the efficiency of the leak notification procedures; and the effectiveness of the incident command. In addition, the Safety Board’s investigation addressed leak detection procedures used on the Pepco pipeline and the analysis of the pipeline’s inline inspection results.

The Safety Board report drew these conclusions:

  1. Because results of ultrasonic tool data for the pipeline were incorrectly interpreted, Pepco was not alerted to the need for additional pipe evaluation.
  2. Because pipeline operators have no nationally recognized criteria with which to evaluate pipe wrinkles, they may not be effectively determining whether that pipe should remain in service.
  3. The absence of effective pipeline monitoring procedures and practices delayed the discovery of the fuel oil shortage on April 7, 2000, which delayed the pipeline shutdown and allowed more oil to leak.
  4. Because pipeline owners and operators sometimes do not update their initial reports to the National Response Center, the notifications provided to emergency responders may not always contain the information needed to develop an effective incident response.
  5. Because it did not implement an Incident Command System, the Unified Command was for several days unable to mobilize and control an effective response to the loss of oil containment that took place on the evening of April 8, 2000.

The NTSB determined that the probable cause of the Pepco pipeline failure was an undiscovered fracture due to data from an inline inspection tool that was interpreted inaccurately as representing a T-piece.

The Safety Board made these recommendations:

  1. OPS should establish quantitative criteria, based on engineering evaluations, for determining whether a wrinkle may be allowed to remain in a pipeline.
  2. OPS should require pipeline owners and operators to provide follow-up telephone updates to the National Response Center when they discover that the information they initially reported contains significant errors or when they identify significant new information directly related to the reporting criteria.
  3. EPA should require all EPA regions to integrate the principles contained in the National Response Team’s Technical Assistance Document Incident Command System/Unified Command.
  4. EPA should manage responses to oil discharges and hazardous substance releases under the national contingency plan in their area contingency plans, and require the regions to train all personnel who are assigned responsibility to implement the plans according to those principles.