Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs (OIRA) announced
that it had approved a final rule from the DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous
Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) that would expand certain pipeline
safety requirements for gas transmission pipelines. The notice of proposed
rulemaking (NPRM) for this rule was
published in April 2016.
According to the abstract
for this rulemaking published in the Spring 2019 Unified Agenda:
“This rulemaking amends the
pipeline safety regulations to address the testing and pressure reconfirmation
of certain previously untested gas transmission pipelines and certain gas
transmission pipelines with inadequate records, require operators incorporate
seismicity into their risk analysis and data integration, require the reporting
of maximum allowable operating pressure exceedances, allow a 6-month extension
of integrity management reassessment intervals with notice, and expand
integrity assessments outside of high consequence areas to other populated
areas.”
There is no telling how long it will take PHMSA to publish
this final rule in the Federal Register. Agencies in the Trump Administration
have been taking longer than the historical norm to publish regulations.
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