IV. Responding to the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002
The Congress recognized the critical importance of pipelines to our
Nation’s vitality when it passed the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act
of 2002. Under Secretary Mineta’s leadership, PHMSA has
aggressively responded to these new mandates.
1. Integrity Management
Since last appearing before this Committee in June 2004, PHMSA is
now enforcing regulation of integrity management programs for both
hazardous liquid and natural gas transmission operators. PHMSA and
its State partners have completed comprehensive inspections of large
hazardous liquid operators who are assessing and repairing nearly 80
percent of the Nation’s hazardous liquid pipelines, resulting in the
elimination of over 20,000 time sensitive pipeline defects. Our
hazardous liquid integrity inspections address, among other safety
issues, the adequacy of placement of emergency flow restricting
devices and the adequacy of the leak detection systems. We worked
with 46 percent of operators inspected to improve their preventive and
mitigation measures.
PHMSA has now completed 13 percent of gas transmission integrity
management inspections, providing supplemental protections for
approximately two-thirds of American communities living along natural
gas pipelines. We expect eventually that nearly 60 percent of the
natural gas transmission pipeline mileage will be similarly assessed and
repaired.
In June 2005, the Administration submitted our plan to Congress to
strengthen the safety of gas distribution pipeline systems through use of
integrity management principles. We work closely with the State
Utility Commissions who have jurisdiction over distribution systems
and the ultimate authority to decide what additional protections to
require and what costs to pass on to consumers. We are following the
guidance provided in the February 16, 2005 National Association of
Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ “Resolution on Distribution
Integrity Management” in implementing this safety plan which urges a
performance based approach that leaves states flexibility. PHMSA
began work with the Gas Piping Technology Committee to develop
consensus guidance to accompany the agency rulemaking that is
underway.
2. Operator Qualification
Our regulations require operators of gas and hazardous liquid pipelines
to conduct programs to qualify individuals who perform certain safety-
related tasks on pipelines. In early 2003, we developed a standard to
evaluate the adequacy of operators’ programs, as required by the PSIA.
We also issued a Direct Final Rule that codifies the new mandated
requirements concerning personnel training, notice of program changes,
government review and verification of programs, and use of on-the-job
performance as a qualification method.
We completed all reviews of interstate operators’ qualification
programs and met the 2005 statutory deadline. States have made
similar progress. Our report to the Congress is due December 2006.
We held two public meetings to seek more comprehensive information
from states, the public and the pipeline industry to produce an
informative final product.
We are considering some additional improvements in our regulations.
We plan to incorporate in our enforcement approach improved
consensus standards for the qualification of pipeline operators for safety
critical functions.
As required by the PSIA, we conducted a controller certification pilot
program to evaluate how best to further assure pipeline controllers have
and maintain adequate qualification for their required job tasks. We
reviewed information on training and qualification programs from a
variety of resources, including programs of other industries, the NTSB,
operators, trade associations, public interest groups, system vendors,
and simulator specialists. We have completed our assessment and will
hold a public workshop in June to share our findings. This workshop
will focus on alarms, shift change procedures, roles controllers play,
fatigue, recognition of abnormal events, and validation of adequacy of
control processes.
3. Public Education and Mapping
Working with others, we are raising the quality of public education
operators provide, as well as what we provide. First we oversaw
operators’ self assessments required in the PSIA and determined
considerable improvement was needed. We called for a new consensus
standard for public education and stakeholders responded by creating
one that significantly raised the bar. The NTSB acted to close all its
recommendations on public education. We conducted four nationwide,
webcast public meetings on this standard to build effective public
awareness programs. Currently, we are developing a clearinghouse to
review and evaluate the adequacy and effectiveness of more than 2,200
public safety and education programs established locally by the pipeline
industry.
We have enlisted State fire marshals to help bring information and
guidance to communities across America and build an understanding of
pipeline safety and first responder needs. In less than 15 months, we
made great strides in advancing our fire service training curriculum.
We have provided training to approximately 5,000 trainers in 31 States
and distributed over 13,000 textbooks, 5,000 instructor guides and
6,000 training videos. The first-of-its-kind pipeline accident response
training and public education program for first responders will help
pipeline operators to identify high consequence areas in communities
and provide an understanding of liquefied natural gas operations.
We are improving our efforts to reach the public by preparing local
officials to be public education resources within communities and
providing additional resources for citizens to learn how they can protect
themselves and pipelines. Our community assistance and technical
services staff provide information to citizens and advise local officials
to guide their decisions about local land use. We also utilize the
efficiency of the World Wide Web to give citizens and other
stakeholders instant access to community specific pipeline information
with our newly established stakeholder communications website.
We completed the base structure of the National Pipeline Mapping
System in 2003, and keep it up to date with improvements. We recently
made the system available for public web searches on contact
information of pipeline companies and made other web improvements
to help the public access general information on pipelines and operator
performance. We provide more sensitive mapping information to
Federal, State and local governments through a password-protected
application. This information is restricted by jurisdiction and cannot be
released outside of the requesting agency.
Working with the pipeline industry and State agencies, we annually
hold about 15 public meetings per year to acquaint citizens and public
officials with essential safety information to make informed decisions
about living safely with and minimizing damage to pipelines.
4. Damage Prevention
Helping communities know how they can live safely with pipelines by
preventing damage to pipelines is a very important goal. We cannot
succeed without enlisting the help of State and local officials and the
full range of public safety stakeholders who share an interest in
protecting all underground infrastructure.
We work with the Common Ground Alliance (CGA) on all damage
prevention efforts, leading many stakeholders to share responsibility for
damage prevention. We are now planning to implement the most
important new tool in our assault on third-party damage to pipelines,
three-digit dialing, required in the PSIA. The Federal Communications
Commission responded favorably to our request for a single three-digit
number usable for “one call” anywhere in the U.S. Three-digit dialing
of “811” provides a single uniform action that all Americans can take to
improve safety. Since 2002, our partnership with the CGA has helped
us address nine NTSB recommendations in preventing damage to
pipelines.
We also worked with CGA to create 44 new regional CGAs to help
communities implement damage prevention best practices across all
underground facilities. These alliances provide synergy in the
“underground” among other utilities, railroads, insurance companies,
public works and other municipal organizations, to implement best
safety actions. The CGA highlights best practices of leading States
such as Minnesota, Virginia, Connecticut, Georgia, and Massachusetts
in identifying and enforcing the elements of an effective damage
prevention program for other States to follow. These States’
enforcement against all who violate their laws led to a 50 percent
decrease in damages in just a few years. Strengthening enforcement is
one of many important best practices we promote through the CGA and
with our state partners and we believe all states can achieve similar
results.
5. Research and Development
Over the past three years, PHMSA has built a research and
development (R&D) program that has funded 80 projects at a
cumulative expense of nearly $50 million to address better diagnostic
tools, testing of unpiggable pipes, stronger materials, improved pipeline
locating and mapping, prevention of outside force damage, and leak
detection.
We are focused on near-term technology development needs. We
support technology demonstrations such as remote sensing of gas leaks
and internal inspection of unpiggable pipes.
We are maximizing the return on our R&D investment by coordinating
activities within and with other Federal agencies such as the
Department of Commerce, National Institutes of Standards and
Technology and the Department of Interior.
6. Interagency Efforts to Implement Section 16 of the PSIA
Since our last testimony, we have designed and are testing a web-based
environmental permit review process to: (a) provide early electronic
notification of proposed pipeline repairs to Federal agencies, and solicit
State and local agencies involved in the review process for pipeline
repairs and (b) expedite coordination and approval of recommended
best practices for operators to use to manage environmental damage
when repairing their pipelines in environmentally important areas. This
process meets the requirements of the PSIA by ensuring all
environmental laws are addressed in the most efficient manner. A
remaining issue is timely, consistent participation by all permitting
agencies.