Nick Snow
Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON, DC, Mar. 17 -- The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America and other industry groups have urged a House subcommittee to consider reauthorizing the Pipeline Safety and Improvement Act of 2002 for 5 years instead of 4.
Doing so would move the process outside an election year and give lawmakers more time to address future issues, said Jeryl L. Mohn, Panhandle Energy senior vice-president of operations and engineering, in INGAA testimony submitted to a March 16 hearing of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's highways, transit and pipelines subcommittee.
Michael N. Mears, vice-president of transportation for Magellan Midstream Partners LP, who testified on behalf of the Association of Oil Pipe Lines and the American Petroleum Institute, also recommended that the pipeline safety act be reauthorized for 5 years.
The hearing was the first of several planned to examine federal pipeline safety regulation set to expire Sept. 30.
The 5-year reauthorization recommendation was one of a few minor changes to a program that INGAA and its members believe is working well, said Mohn.
"Although the congressional schedule for the rest of 2006 is short, the current program is working very effectively and therefore needs only modest changes. We therefore see no reason why Congress cannot reach consensus and complete a reauthorization bill this year," he said.
But Mohn asked the subcommittee to consider three amendments that would achieve what he called evolutionary changes in the current program: changing the current 7-year reassessment program to a 10-year period, improving state excavation damage prevention programs, and changing the jurisdictional status for direct lateral lines.
He said the current pipeline safety regulations give operators 10 years to conduct baseline integrity assessments of segments in populated areas. It also requires them to reassess previously inspected pipe after 7 years and every 7 years thereafter.
Possible overlap
The result, said Mohn, is that reassessments for segments that are baseline-inspected in 2004 and 2005, or if a prior assessment is relied upon, would be reassessed during 2011 and 2012, respectively, "even though the baseline inspections are still being conducted."
INGAA continues to favor the 10-year reassessment interval for high-pressure systems in an American Society of Mechanical Engineers industry consensus standard that the interstate gas pipeline group initially proposed in 2001.
The current 7-year interval was a compromise reached with the understanding that the Government Accountability Office would analyze the reassessment question before the pipeline safety act's reauthorization, Mohn said. INGAA and its members have supplied information to GAO.
Mohn also suggested that requiring inspections too frequently could divert resources from other safety efforts. "The current integrity assessment program focuses primarily on one class of causes of pipeline accidents. There are, however, a variety of other risks as well," he said.
"A credible and effective integrity management program prioritizes risks and develops different strategies for addressing those risks. There may, in fact, be instances where we would want to inspect some pipeline segments more frequently than every 7 years—in highly corrosive environments, for example," Mohn said.
Kate Siggerud, the GAO's physical infrastructure issues director, testified that the agency found the 7-year requirement consistent with the industry consensus standard of reassessing pipelines operating under stress every 5-10 years.
She said 25 operators that GAO contacted "favored conducting reassessments based on severity of risk." These operators did not anticipate problems in finding resources to conduct reassessments during the 2010-12 "overlap period," she said.
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