WASHINGTON ? A pipeline bill offered by House Republicans on Wednesday would block some safety reforms and ignores other recent safety recommendations made by accident investigators in response to a deadly gas explosion last year near San Francisco.
The bill would prohibit federal regulators from requiring pipeline operators to inspect the structural integrity of major transmission lines in lightly populated areas. It would also bar regulators from setting standards for industry on detecting leaks. Instead, it tells regulators to study both issues and come back with findings in a year or two.
After a series of gas and oil pipeline accidents over the past year, the Department of Transportation recently said it was considering whether to require operators to examine the integrity of major pipelines everywhere, not just in densely populated areas as is currently required.
Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board blamed a series of failures by one of the nation's largest gas companies, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., for an accident that killed eight people and injured 58 others in San Bruno, Calif. The Sept. 9, 2010 accident also destroyed 38 homes and damaged 70 others.
Weak oversight by federal and state regulators contributed to the accident, the board said.
The bill was posted online Wednesday by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The committee is tentatively scheduled to vote on it on Thursday.
The bill "improves safety, enhances reliability, and provides regulatory certainty that will help create new jobs," Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., the bill's chief sponsor, said in a statement.
But safety advocates said the bill would undermine safety, and the nation's top accident investigator cautioned against blocking regulators from imposing tougher standards on industry.
"As a result of the investigation in San Bruno and others across the country, the NTSB would be concerned about any legislation that weakens an already lax system of oversight," board chairman Deborah Hersman said in a statement.
The board is also investigating gas pipeline explosions in Philadelphia and Allentown, Pa., and an oil pipeline spills that fouled the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Mich.
The GOP bill is silent on several key NTSB recommendations, including that gas companies be required to install automatic shutoff valves on transmission lines in densely populated areas. The pipeline that ruptured underneath a San Bruno subdivision ignited a pillar of fire that flared like a giant blowtorch for more than 90 minutes before gas company employees could manually close valves, shutting off gas to the line.
PG&E has estimated the cost of replacing or retrofitting its current 300 manual values with automatic valves at $100,000 to $1.5 million per valve, depending on the difficulty of the installation. Federal regulators have also said they are considering requiring operators to install more automatic valves.
Another NTSB recommendation not in the bill is that all gas transmission pipelines constructed before 1970 be subjected to a hydrostatic pressure test that incorporates a spike test. Pipelines constructed before 1970, like the one in San Bruno, are exempted from the testing requirements.
"It's surprising that right after NTSB did one of their largest investigations over one of the biggest (pipeline) tragedies that this bill pays so little attention to those recommendations and actually steps backwards," Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a safety advocacy group.
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