HR 2845 Passes in Senate

Yesterday, the Senate took up HR 2845, the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act Of 2011, under a ‘unanimous consent motion’ and passed it in record time. As is typical with this procedure in the Senate, there was no discussion and no vote; in fact I would bet that there were fewer than a dozen Senators in the chambers.

While that sounds like a good way to ram stuff through the Senate, it really works out rather well. The leadership of both parties usually coordinate the bills that are dealt with in this manner and it only takes a single voice in opposition to stop the proceedings. That is why both parties always have at least one person on the floor while the Senate is in session.

No Conference

My comments in yesterday’s blog about S 275 and conference committee no longer apply to this bill. With it being considered under unanimous consent there were no amendments made to the bill, so the House language was adopted by both bodies. The bill now goes to the President for signature.

HR 2845 Passed in House – Pipeline Safety

Yesterday the House, as expected, passed HR 2845, the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011, by a voice vote (page H8339). The ‘debate’ on the bill took just under the allotted 40 minutes; but no one spoke in opposition to the bill.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, the bill will now go to the Senate where they will most likely substitute the language from S 275 (a very similar bill) and approve that version. The bill will then likely have to go to conference to work out the minor differences. Or, the House could just accept the Senate version.

Differences between HR 2845 and HR 2937

As promised earlier, I have had a chance now to do a side-by-side comparison of both House pipeline safety bills (HR 2845 and HR 2937) as well as the Senate bill (S 275). All three bills started out as very similar measures and they diverged during the committee review process. There are some significant differences between HR 2845 and HR 2937 (the one that I have provided the most coverage of since it was the most detailed) and interestingly the bill that the House leadership decided upon is the one that is least like the Senate version.

NOTE: HR 2845 is the Transportation Committee bill and HR 2937 is the Commerce Committee bill. They share jurisdiction over pipeline safety issues.

Items not Included in HR 2845

The following sections are found in HR 2937 but not in HR 2845; in very many ways HR 2845 is HR 2937-Lite:

§ 6. Excess flow valves;

§ 7. Integrity management;

§ 9. Cast iron gas pipelines;

§ 13. Pipeline infrastructure data collection;

§ 14. International cooperation and consultation;

§ 16. Alaska project coordination;

§ 18. Special permits;

§ 24. Additional resources;

§ 27. Maximum allowable operating pressure;

§ 28. Cover over buried pipeline;

§ 29. Onshore gathering lines;

§ 30. Natural gas pipeline leak detection report; and

§ 31. Report on minority or woman-owned or disadvantaged businesses.

I’ve discussed many of these in previous blog posts on HR 2937. One point of new information; §6 in HR 2937 is largely taken care of in the recently published ANPRM on excess flow valves.

New Items in HR 2845

There is one section in HR 2845 that is not found in HR 2937:

§ 10. Transportation-related onshore facility response plan compliance.

This is a minor editorial change being made to 33 U.S.C. 1321(m)(2) updating some references to personnel in the DOT chain of command.

Changed Section Titles

There are three sections found in HR 2845 that don’t appear to have corresponding sections in HR 2937. A closer examination of the titles and a review of their contents show that generally speaking they can be found in both bills. The sections in HR 2845 are listed below with the corresponding HR 2937 section number in parentheses.

§ 8. Leak detection (§ 10);

§ 9. Accident and incident notification (§ 11);

§ 20. Gas and hazardous liquid gathering lines (§ 29).

The differences in titles are mirrored in some significant differences in how the general provisions are implemented. HR 2845 prohibits the Secretary from proceeding with rulemaking actions on leak detection requirements until Congress authorizes the rule after reviewing the Secretary’s report under this section. Both bills try to accomplish essentially the same notification provisions but HR 2845 does not change 49 USC 60139, the underlying law governing these notifications. And finally HR 2845 allows two years to complete the report on gathering lines instead of the one year time limit in HR 2937.

Moving Forward

 

As I noted in the blog earlier today, the consideration of HR 2845 under suspension of rules is a pretty sure indication that the leadership does not expect any significant opposition to the bill. What will be interesting to see is how the House-Senate conference works out the differences between HR 2845 and the provision of HR 2937 that the Senate adds back in when they substitute the language from S 275.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 12-12-11

Both the Senate and House will be working this week waiting to see what the leadership comes up with as far as compromise on the spending bill for the rest of the government. With a Friday deadline once again approaching it is always possible that another short term CR will be passed. The DOD authorization bill conference report is also expected this week. With all of that waiting going on there is only one committee hearing currently scheduled for this week that will be of interest to the chemical safety community, a Senate hearing on transportation issues.

HAZMAT Transportation

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will be holding an executive session (markup/final action) on Wednesday on four transportation related bills. Two of those bills will be of particular interest to the chemical safety and transportation communities;

• S 1950, the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Enhancement Act of 2011; and

• S 1952, the Hazardous Materials Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2011.

Both bills were introduced last week, but there are currently no publicly available copies of the bill for review. Hopefully the GPO will have them available later today or tomorrow as there could be lots of interesting things in these two bills crafted by Sen. Lautenberg and co-sponsored by Chairman Rockefeller.

Pipeline Safety Bill

The House Rules Committee web site and the Majority Leader’s web site both indicate that HR 2845, Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011, will be brought to the Floor this week to be considered ‘under the suspension of rules’. This procedure limits the amount of debate and prohibits amendments to the bill. It also requires a larger number of votes to pass the measure so it is reserved for relatively non-controversial bills. It is also an indicator that the leadership expects the bill to pass easily.

It is scheduled to be considered on Monday, though a vote, if a recorded vote is demanded (likely), could be postponed until Tuesday.

NOTE: This is not the pipeline safety bill that I have been following closely in this blog (HR 2937). I'll have more info on this bill in a later post.

DOD Authorization

The House-Senate Conference Committee was working on HR 1540, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, last week. According to the Majority Leader’s web site the bill will be brought to the Floor later this week. This will be considered under a rule, but Rules Committee does not yet have a hearing scheduled on that Rule nor has the conference report been printed. Both are likely to happen on Tuesday with floor action on Wednesday or Thursday. It will be a closed rule with very limited debate. Bipartisan support is expected.

Transportation Committee Marks Up CG and Pipeline Bills

Today the House Transportation Committee held a markup hearing where it approved five bills by voice votes; including two bills that might be of interest to readers of this blog:

H.R. 2838, the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2011; and

H.R. 2845, the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011.

HR 2838

I discussed the provisions of HR 2838 when it was introduced last week. None of the amendments offered today (7 offered, 3 withdrawn, 4 passed by  voice votes) had any effect on the provisions discussed in that posting. Neither did any of the amendments address and MTSA/TWIC issues or pending Certain Dangerous Cargo rules. In short, there is nothing in this bill (besides the GPS interference provisions) that will have any appreciable effect on chemical security or chemical safety in a maritime environment.

I did note in that earlier post that this bill was obviously a priority for Subcommittee Chairman LoBiondo (R,NJ). The full committee markup today is an indication of the importance accorded to this bill by both LoBiondo and Committee Chair Mica (R,FL).

HR 2845

HR 2845 was introduced yesterday by Rep. Shuster (R, PA) and an official copy of the bill is not yet available on the GPO web site. The link above is to a committee draft of the bill. A quick review of that draft shows that this bill has some significant difference from the House Energy and Commerce bill on the same topic that I discussed back in July. It is also appears substantially different from S 275 that addresses most of the same topics.

Since this bill was referred to the Energy and Commerce Committee as well as the Transportation Committee, the two slightly different approaches to pipeline safety will have to be reconciled before the bill comes to a floor vote. The version adopted by the full House (a relative certainty given the bipartisan support shown for the bill in Committee today) will most likely have to then be reconciled with the version of S 275 that will be adopted by Committee in that body.

NOTE: I did not include this hearing in my weekly list of upcoming hearings because it was not announced until yesterday.