PHMSA Sends Pipeline Safety Final Rule to OMB

Yesterday the DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) sent a final rule to the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review. The rule addresses the safety of hazardous liquid pipelines and has been in the works since 2010. The notice of proposed rulemaking was published in 2015.

According to the Fall 2018 Unified Agenda, this final rule seeks to:

• Extend reporting requirements to gravity lines that do not meet certain exceptions;

• Extend certain reporting requirements to all hazardous liquid gathering lines;

• Require inspections of pipelines in areas affected by extreme weather, natural disasters, and other similar events;

• Require periodic assessments of onshore transmission pipelines that are not already covered under the integrity management (IM) program requirements;

• Expand the use of leak detection systems on onshore hazardous liquid transmission pipelines to mitigate the effects of failures that occur outside of high consequence areas;

• Modify the IM repair criteria, both by expanding the list of conditions that require immediate remediation and consolidating the time frames for re-mediating all other conditions;

• Increase the use of inline inspection tools by requiring that any pipeline that could affect a high consequence area be capable of accommodating these devices within 20 years, unless its basic construction will not permit that accommodation; and

• Clarify other regulations to improve compliance and enforcement.