Pipeline safety progress noted at API pipeline conference

Gathering in Dallas last month for the 53rd annual American Petroleum Institute Pipeline Conference, US pipeline industry executives and managers faced the same challenge as when they met a year ago: to improve performance so that the public no longer believes pipeline operations threaten communities.

That was the opening message of current API Pipeline Committee Chairman Tim Felt, president and CEO of Explorer Pipeline Co., Tulsa.

"Safety, security, environmental protection, and on-time delivery of crude oil and refined products" are the industry’s "daily business," said Felt, and must be achieved in a spirit of accountability, the conference’s main theme.

Record, progress

Felt reported that the industry, whose record has improved substantially in 30 years, has logged in the past 2 years its best-ever performance. The number of incidents and the volume released were at record lows in 2000, and the latest compilation of 2001 data, although incomplete to date, shows further improvement. These 2 years indicate industry’s "focus on overall performance, analysis of that performance, and establishment of new performance measures can pay dividends."

Felt reported on the nine strategies that comprise the Environmental and Safety Initiative set up in 1999 by API and the Association of Oil Pipelines.

Among them were the following:

• Pipeline reauthorization, integrity. Felt acknowledged that, although industry representatives on this team have been working with the US Congress and the Bush administration to draft meaningful pipeline safety legislation, no act has yet been produced. In a speech following Felt’s, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) detailed the progress and status of such legislation in the current congressional session.
• Liquid, natural gas pipeline industry relationships. Noting that, in the public’s eye, "a pipeline is a pipeline is a pipeline," Felt said a team of industry executives from both segments had issued joint statements of objectives for pipeline safety legislation and had arranged executive summits of hazardous liquid and natural gas pipeline CEOs as well as meetings with US Transportation Sec. Norman Mineta.
• Data management, performance. Since creation in 1999 of the Pipeline Performance Tracking System, 3 years of technical data have been gathered and one major analytical report completed. Felt said that one objective of the group’s activities is to build trust by demonstrating that "inspections of our systems have increased, we are finding and fixing defects, and risk is being reduced across our systems."

Another objective is to set specific performance measures for the industry, "holding ourselves accountable for our safety and environmental performance."

• Research and development. Although the industry conducts research and development, said Felt, those are mostly company-specific and address short-term needs. The federal government is asking the industry to take a broader approach.

"We must demonstrate our accountability as an industry by taking the lead in developing technologies, tools, and materials that will build public trust in our industry," he said.

• Public information and communication. Felt said that a survey of public officials by industry representatives revealed that "personal contact was universally considered the best way to convey information about pipelines.

"These representatives are looking at what public officials need to know and what they want to know about pipe- lines, how to use technology for better communication, and how trade associations can supplement the work we do as individual companies."

Safety legislation progress

Via satellite link, Murray began her speech by acknowledging the important role of pipelines in transporting energy and heating homes and by noting that pipelines are a far safer means of transporting hazardous materials than others. At the same time, however, "some are not as safe as they could be," she said.

"I believe we have a responsibility to raise the safety standard and am pleased that many in the pipeline industry recognize what’s at stake," she said.

Murray said that, until the pipeline rupture and fire nearly 3 years ago that killed three people in Bellingham, Wash., she had given little thought to the network of pipelines that operate in the US. The incident "left many of us wondering about the safety of oil and gas pipelines."

Since then, she has become the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Transportation Appropriations: "That means I write the budget that funds the Department of Transportation. It also means I have congressional oversight of the Office of Pipeline Safety."

The new pipeline safety legislation Congress is considering would:

• Improve qualification and training of pipeline personnel.
• Improve pipeline inspection and accident prevention practices.
• Expand the public’s "right to know."
• Raise the penalty for safety violators.
• Allow states to expand their safety work and protect "whistleblowers."
• Encourage investment in new technology and increase funding for safety efforts.

Murray then recounted what has happened to pipeline safety legislation since 1999. In September 2000, the Senate passed pipeline safety legislation without dissent. The US House of Representatives did not mark up its own bill. Instead, it took up the Senate bill, but under a rule that requires two-thirds House majority for passage. Although a simple majority supported the legislation, it failed to get this larger majority.

In February 2001, the Senate again passed a pipeline safety bill. But not until February 2002 did the House finally hold a hearing on the issue.

Murray said she understands the House is about to mark up its own bill, one that carries fewer measures than the Senate’s, especially in that it lacks strong inspection and testing requirements and adequate operator qualification.

Murray said that, in the meantime, she has used her position on the Transportation appropriations subcommittee to boost funding for pipeline safety. "We secured more than $58 million for OPS: more than $5 million [more] than the administration requested and $11 million more than its FY 2001 budget. We also funded 26 new positions at OPS. In addition, we boosted funding for testing initiatives and communities’ right to know."

She said her committee has also secured $4.7 million for pipeline safety and research and development: "We need to invest in new technology that will help us evaluate pipelines accurately and efficiently."

Finally, Murray noted that she and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) worked to attach the pipeline safety bill to the overall energy bill: "Our efforts were successful, but once again we are waiting for the House to act."