The House Energy and Commerce Committee gave U.S. Rep. Lois Capps’ (D-Santa Barbara) Pipeline Safety Act a stamp of approval last week. The bill seeks to strengthen safety regulations on oil and gas pipelines throughout the United States.
Capps’ Press Secretary C.J. Young told the Sun that the bill vies to apply lessons learned from the Plains All-American Pipeline failure that caused last year’s Refugio oil spill. A government investigation into the pipeline failure pinpointed corrosion as the culprit.
According to the investigation report, steps taken to prevent corrosion on Line 901 (the failed line) would have sufficed for a non-insulated pipeline—but because Line 901 was insulated, those preventative measures weren’t enough. Young said the Pipeline Safety Act calls for additional research on how and why corrosion occurs in insulated lines.
“The corrosion study will be critical to understanding insulated pipelines, like 901,” Young said. “Those corrode differently from non-insulated pipelines. There’s a lot more we could know about that and what leads to enhanced corrosion.”
If regulators had a better understanding of insulated pipeline corrosion, they would be better equipped to prevent similar failures from occurring again, he said.
The bill also clarifies which regions are designated as “high consequence areas” (HCAs), which are subject to stronger pipeline safety standards and more frequent testing for pipeline integrity. Under the Pipeline Safety Act, all coastal regions would be considered HCAs, Young said.
Prior to the bill’s passage, Capps said in a statement that as long as society relies on fossil fuels for energy, oil leaks, gas leaks, and facility explosions will remain a threat—but the Pipeline Safety Act would take a step in the right direction.
“These will be important provisions that will make a real impact on pipeline safety,” Capps said in her statement. “However, there is still room to strengthen this bill.”
Young said one such area is the bill’s recommendation, but not demand, for annual pipeline inspections.
“The bill only designates certain regions of the country as requiring inspections every year,” he said. “Ultimately, we weren’t able to get bipartisan support for inspection of pipelines every year.”
At the time of the Refugio spill, Line 901 was inspected every three years, which allowed for enough time between inspections for the pipeline corrosion to increase dramatically and eventually cause a leak, Young said.
“Should all pipelines in high consequence areas be mandated for inspections every year, that would have been caught sooner and perhaps prevented the pipeline failure from occurring,” he said.
The Pipeline Safety Act will go to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee next, hopefully within the next two months, Young said. If it passes through the committee, it’ll go to the House floor.
This article appears in May 5-12, 2016.