PHMSA Announces Pipeline Safety Workshops

Today’s Federal Register (FR 77 6857-6858) includes an announcement by the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) about two public workshops on pipeline safety issues that will be held on March 27^th, 2012 and March 28^th, 2012. The meeting will help PHMSA complete several reports required by the recently passed Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 (PL 112-90 or HR 2845).

The March 27^th meeting will cover Improving Pipeline Leak Detection System Effectiveness and it will address three topics:

• Informing the public about state-of-the-art leak detection systems and the practical considerations involved with deploying and maintaining these systems;

• Identifying the constraints and issues with deploying systems on existing and new construction pipelines; and

• Collecting public input that will help guide a PHMSA study investigating and documenting detection system challenges and considerations.

The March 28^th meeting will cover Understanding the Application of Automatic Control and Remote Control Valves and it will address three topics:

• Gathering information on the state-of-the-art of automatic/remote control valve operations on the practical considerations involved with installing, operating and maintaining these valves;

• Identifying the constraints with deploying systems on existing versus new construction pipelines; and

• Collecting public input that will help guide a PHMSA study investigating and documenting automatic control and remote control valve challenges and considerations.

PHMSA is encouraging public participation at both meetings. Updated registration information is available on the web. Both meetings will be webcast with information about logging into those to be posted to that site at a later date.

BTW: Both of these topics address topics that will inherently involve both industrial control systems and communications between remote devices in those systems. One would like to think that the security aspects of that will be addressed at these meetings; I’m not holding my breath.