Congress recently convened its third Committee Hearing on reauthorization of the Pipeline Safety Act, before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Much of the discussion of focused on pipeline security, among other issues that have been discussed in prior hearings. Adding to the focus was the absence of an invited representative from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the agency who is tasked with sharing oversight of pipeline security with PHMSA. The TSA has come under criticism in light of a recent Government Accountability Office report that was critical of the agency’s Pipeline Security Division and its ability to ensure the safety and reliability of pipeline energy network from both cyber and physical security saboteurs. That report cited “significant weaknesses” in TSA’s program and pointed to, among other challenges, a shortage of qualified inspectors to address cyberattacks and other physical intrusions facing pipelines.
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GAO
State Participation in Interstate Pipeline Inspections: GAO Recommendations
A recent Report to Congress mandated by the most recent amendments to the Pipeline Safety Act was released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), reviewing federal and state responsibilities and resources for inspection of pipelines that transport product across state lines. Increases in funding have allowed the federal agency charged with regulating pipeline safety, the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA or the Agency), to expand its own inspection workforce and reduce its reliance on state agents. The Report to Congress finds that the Agency has not assessed future workforce needs, however, to determine the appropriate level of state participation.
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GAO Report Critical of PHMSA Inspection Priorities
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report on August 4, 2017, titled “Pipeline Safety – Additional Actions Could Improve Federal Use of Data on Pipeline Materials and Corrosion.” The 55 page Report, prepared in response to a Congressional mandate in the 2016 Pipeline Safety Act reauthorization, summarizes pipeline materials, training and corrosion prevention technologies for gas and liquid pipeline facilities and analyzes PHMSA use of corrosion and material data to inform its inspection priorities. The Report recommends that PHMSA review, document and validate the way in which it identifies the highest risk pipelines for inspection, but makes no significant new findings, and the recommendations are largely consistent with initiatives that PHMSA already has begun.
The Report notes initially that pipelines carrying hazardous liquids or gas have the lowest incident rate of other transportation modes. For oil and gas pipelines from 2010 to 2015, GAO’s assessment of PHMSA incident data attaches the highest single cause as corrosion (22%), followed by “equipment failure” (21%), “natural or outside force” (16%) and “excavation damage” (14%). PHMSA tracks causal data somewhat differently, however, grouping “equipment failure” and “material/weld failures” together in a single category, which is reported by operators to be the largest cause of significant incidents in the past 5 years. By comparison, the GAO Report links corrosion (22%) with “material, pipe or weld failure” (12%), although it is a very different failure mechanism from corrosion, to be the estimated cause of nearly one-third of all oil and gas significant incidents.…
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