Underground Infrastructure - May 2023 - 11

necessarily, according to the industry,
when population near a pipeline increases.
The 2020 bill required PHMSA
to hold a Gas Pipeline Advisory Committee
(GPAC) meeting to review the
proposed, October 2020 rule PHMSA
issued on class location reform. It was
required to happen by the end of 2021,
but no meeting has yet taken place.
President Biden never nominated a
new administrator at PHMSA, so the
lack of leadership over the past two years
has hobbled an agency that traditionally
has failed to meet numerous congressional
deadlines. At a March 2023 hearing
in front of the House Railroads, Pipelines
and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee,
Tristan Brown, deputy administrator of
the PHMSA, made some vague promises
about when that class location rulemaking
would move forward.
Kenneth Grubb, CEO for natural gas
pipelines at Kinder Morgan, told the
House subcommittee that transmission
Bore_Spacer-Ad_UC_2020.pdf 1 2/24/2020 10:40:27 AM
companies have to submit special permits
to avoid having to repair perfectly
working pipelines when class location
rules come into play. PHMSA can take up
to three years to approve those permits.
Grubb said that the class location rules
force pipelines to emit up to 800 million
standard cubic feet of methane annually,
as a result of what, in many cases, are unnecessary
blowdowns. INGAA estimates
that the existing requirements cost its
members $200 to $300 million per year to
unnecessarily replace perfectly safe pipe.
Bill Caram, executive director, Pipeline
Safety Trust, countered that the class
location rules need to stay as is because in
some instances, the pipelines have done
a poor job implementing integrity management
programs in high consequence
areas (HCAs). Although he did admit,
" there are some wonderful operators
leading the way on safety. "
Caram also presented a long wish list
of additional pipeline safety measures he
would like to see Congress endorse in a
2024 safety bill. Some of those include requiring
operators to retrofit older pipelines
in HCAs with rupture mitigation valves
(RMVs). PHMSA currently does not have
the authority to do that, and Caram wants
a grant of authority in the next bill.
He also backed expanded pipeline reporting
of gas leaks and other incidents,
which is currently limited by " thresholds "
set by the agency.
" Consequently, many large and potentially
dangerous incidents are not reported
to the administration, " said Caram. " This
means that PHMSA's safety data likely
underrepresents incident prevalence and
that the opportunity to use these incidents
as a learning opportunity is lost. " UI
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Underground Infrastructure - May 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Underground Infrastructure - May 2023
