Eyes on the pipe

The US government shut down at midnight, Dec. 22, 2018. What didn’t shut down with it was US politics. If anything, the shutdown has turned up the heat on an already boiling pot of partisan mistrust and posturing. This is no less the case in energy policy than anywhere else.

One week after the shutdown began, Sunoco Pipeline placed its 350-mile Mariner East 2 NGL system in service. The pipeline transports domestically produced ethane, propane, and butane from processing plants in Ohio to Energy Transfer Partners’ Marcus Hook Industrial Complex in Delaware County, Pa., where the NGLs are stored for distribution to both local and export markets.

Mariner East 2 construction began in early 2017 and was marked by both ongoing protests and multiple drilling fluid spills. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in January 2018 ordered Sunoco to stop construction until it could comply with requirements in an order the agency had issued.

Done but not forgotten

Compliance occurred, construction was completed, and now the pipeline is operating. But it remains contentious. “The fact that a dangerous natural gas liquids pipeline was allowed to become operational while PHMSA [Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration] inspectors are furloughed…shows a serious lack of oversight over Sunoco,” Downington, Pa., mayor Josh Maxwell told local media after Mariner East 2’s startup.1

Setting aside the mayor’s assumption that Mariner East 2 is unsafe—neither he nor any of the rest of us have any way of knowing that—his statement is simply untrue. Of PHMSA’s total 563-person staff, 278 remain at work. Among those who remain, 262 have life and safety-related duties.

Explicitly included in the administration’s December 2018 summary of continuing operations were:

• Inspections of pipeline operators and systems to detect and remediate safety concerns and determine compliance with pipeline safety regulations.

• Enforcement of pipeline safety regulations through corrective action orders, notices of probable violations, letters of warning, and other authorized enforcement activities.

• Investigations of hazardous materials accidents to determine the causes and circumstances of failure, the need for corrective action, and any noncompliance that might have contributed to an accident.

• Inspections of hazardous materials shippers, carriers, testing facilities, and cylinder reconditioning facilities to detect and remediate safety concerns and determine compliance with the hazardous materials safety regulations.

The real problem

PHMSA enforces regulations covering roughly 2.7 million miles of pipeline and 1 million daily shipments of hazardous materials. A 2016 Congressional Research Service report highlighted a long-term pattern of understaffing at the administration’s Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS), with the greatest number of vacant positions occurring in 2015. PHMSA began a hiring surge that same year, using a congressionally appropriated increase in funding.

On Nov. 21, 2017, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report titled “PHMSA Has Improved Its Workforce Management but Planning, Hiring, and Retention Challenges Remain.” Between the time it began its hiring surge and the writing of DOT’s report, PHMSA increased OPS’s inspection staff by nearly 42%, adding the equivalent of 84 fulltime positions. In addition to noting that PHMSA had nearly reached its full OPS staffing goal, the OIG report said OPS was better prepared for managing potential future retirements and other workforce fluctuations.

One of the larger challenges facing PHMSA in the wake of the hiring surge is retention of inspectors whose specialized skill set is also highly sought by private industry. But this, like the staffing shortage itself, is an identifiable and addressable problem.

Advancing boogeymen like “dangerous pipelines” and fictitious furloughs to score political points, by contrast, takes focus and resources away from addressing the US pipeline system’s actual needs and looks foolish.