Plains All American is in trouble with the federal government again.
The Houston-based company was deluged with a slew of corrective orders, financial penalties and lawsuits when Line 901, an oil pipeline it operates in Santa Barbara County, split open and spilled approximately 120,000 gallons of crude on Refugio State Beach.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, (PHMSA), however, had already investigated the operation of Line 901 and adjoining Line 903. Between late 2013 and June of 2014, a year before the Refugio spill, federal investigators scrutinized the length of pipe that runs from Sisquoc into Kern County.
On Sept. 11 of this year, the PHMSA issued a notice of probable violation and a proposed compliance order stemming from that investigation. They opted not to fine Plains—although federal law says they could have assessed a fine as high as $2 million.
“Plains is reviewing PHMSA’s letter, sent Sept. 11, 2015, regarding their 2013 field visit to our facilities in Bakersfield, Calif. We will work with PHMSA to resolve the concerns noted in their letter,” communications manager Meredith Matthews wrote to the Sun in an email. “We appreciate and value the effort PHMSA takes to inspect our facilities and procedures, as they are important elements of our industry’s continuous improvement.”
What did Plains reportedly do wrong? It failed to document several items that it was legally required to document, according to the notice.
Plains didn’t document its pressure tests correctly, the notice says. Employees also couldn’t locate “preventative and mitigative evaluations” when federal investigators asked.
The records of Plains All American’s emergency response training program also left regulators unsatisfied. The notice claims that Plains didn’t have evidence to show individual supervisors had been tested on their knowledge after they’d been through the emergency response training.
In its letter to Plains, the PHMSA also highlighted safety concerns where regulations hadn’t explicitly been breached.
“Plains had unclear procedures and documentation of its decision-making process for addressing when in-line inspection tool run data indicates anomalous conditions,” the notice says. In plain English: what to do when employees operate an inspection robot wasn’t spelled out clearly enough.
Also missing, according to the notice: documentation of Plains educating emergency response officials on the One Call System, i.e. call before you dig—even after Plains’ own reports indicated that local sheriff and fire departments didn’t know much about One Call.
Plains now has 30 days to respond to the notice, after which the PHMSA will issue a final compliance order.
This article appears in Sep 24 – Oct 1, 2015.