By the OGJ Online Staff
HOUSTON, Apr. 18 -- Stacey Gerard, associate administrator of the US Department of Transportation's Office of Pipeline Safety, Wednesday urged pipeline companies to collaborate more on the sharing of safety information.
She spoke Wednesday at the American Petroleum Institute's pipeline conference in San Antonio, Tex.
Girard said, "With the growing recognition that the performance of the weakest operation impacts the public view of safety of all pipelines, practices need to be shared in the interest of the entire industry. Collaboration in the solution of common problems must occur. This needs institutionalizing through periodic meetings and workshops.
"Web-based technologies have so much potential for the sharing what one operator used and benefited from. They could also facilitate alerting operators, regulators, and others to the existence of new standards, practices, and measures of effectiveness."
Girard noted that pipelines and OPS share the responsibility for pipeline safety with a larger group of stakeholders than in the past, and those stakeholders must be involved in the process.
"We particularly must include local officials in problem-solving [since they] may have information to help with protecting the pipelines and the community."
She urged pipeline officials to create a corporate climate in which employees are encouraged to report "errors or near misses" in order to prevent future ones.
And she said companies should have the "willingness and commitment to draw lessons from the safety information system and the determination to follow through in the lessons."
Girard noted that the pipeline industry has made great strides toward improving safety in the past 5 years.
She said concepts considered to be on the fringe 5 years ago -- such as mapping the US pipeline system, a national damage prevention alliance, and a national program based on risk management -- are underway today. "With this kind of momentum and commitment, I think anything is possible."
At the API meeting, Colonial Pipeline Co., Atlanta, received the association's top two awards for environmental and safety achievements. Interestingly, the US Environmental Protection Agency brought suit against Colonial last November alleging a "pattern and practice" of product pipeline spills over the last 20 years (OGJ Online, Jan. 9, 2001).
Razorback Pipeline Co., Denver, Colo., and Unocal Pipeline Co., Sugar Land, Tex., won awards for environmental performance by smaller companies.
