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.

HR 2937 Reported in House

Last week the House Energy and Commerce Committee published their report on HR 2937, the Pipeline Infrastructure and Community Protection Act of 2011. The report provides a copy of their proposed amendments to the bill, but there is nothing new in that language that hasn’t already been addressed in this blog. Moving this bill to the floor of the House waits on action by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee which has yet to hold hearings on the bill.

There is one oddity in this report. All committee reports on bills must address the cost of implementation of the bill. This is done by having the Congressional Budget Office conduct a formal review of the various parts of the bill and determining the costs to the Federal government, State and local governments, and the private sector. A letter from the CBO to the Committee Chair is typically included in the report. In this Report the CBO letter on HR 2937 is addressed to Sen. Rockefeller (D,WV), the Chair of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, not Rep. Upton (R,MI), chair of the House Committee. Now Rockefeller’s Committee is looking at a very similar bill, S 275, but this CBO letter specifically addresses the costs of HR 2937, not S 275; odd to say the least.

There is one typical section missing from this report, the minority view. This is where the Committee Ranking Member outlines the problems the opposition has with the bill. In this case, the Committee passed the bill by a vote of 51 to 0 so there was presumably no alternative actions the Committee Democrats would have preferred.

Senate Amends and Passes S 275 – Pipeline Safety

Yesterday the Senate passed S 275, the Pipeline Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2011. Two amendments to the reported language; one administrative and one substantive; along with the bill were all adopted by unanimous consent with no debate.

New Regulations Required

The substantive amendment offered by Sen. Paul (R,KY) adjusted some dates in the sections 26 thru 29 reflecting the fact that it is already FY 2012 and 2011 is nearly over. More importantly a new sub-section was added that would require the Secretary to “prescribe regulations for conducting tests to confirm the material strength of previously untested natural gas transmission pipelines located in areas identified pursuant to section 60109(a) of title 49, United States Code, and operating at a pressure greater than 30 percent of specified minimum yield strength” {§27(d)}.

Section 27 had already required operators to conduct such testing but there had been no provisions for the establishment of regulations specifying how that testing should be conducted. This addition corrects that shortcoming.

Moving Forward

The Senate was the first to get their pipeline safety bill passed so it will be their language that probably gets ignored in the other house. The House will probably take up this bill fairly quickly and substitute language already adopted by committee for the language in this bill. In this case that will probably be HR 2937 that was passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on September 21^st (Note: the committee report on that bill has yet to be published).

Other Bills are Now Dead

With the Senate taking up this bill S 234, the Strengthening Pipeline Safety and Enforcement Act of 2011, has essentially been killed. While not nearly identical to S 275 the two bills overlap enough that there would endless confusion if it was considered and passed. The fate of S 1502 is not nearly so clear. That bill specifically addresses pipelines and river crossings and could still receive consideration. Actually, I’m surprised that its language wasn’t offered as an amendment to this bill. Since it is slightly more controversial than S 275 the Senate leadership may have wanted to avoid having a combined bill that might require debate and amendment.

HR 2937 Amended and Passed in Committee – Pipeline Safety

The House Energy and Commerce Committee took up HR 2937, Pipeline Infrastructure and Community Protection Act of 2011, as the first of three bills considered in their mark-up hearing yesterday. The Committee passed the amended language (that I briefly reported on yesterday) introduced by Chairman Upton (R,MI) by a voice vote and ordered the bill reported favorably by a vote of 55-0, a vote anyone would consider bipartisan.

If/when this comes to the floor of the House this bill will almost certainly pass by a substantial bipartisan majority. A bill with similar language (S 275) is working its way through the Senate. Some sort of pipeline safety bill will almost certainly pass this session.

HR 2937 Published – Pipeline Safety

In my earlier blog on upcoming hearings I noted that the GPO had not yet published the official version of HR 2937. The bill is now available. A quick review of the official version of the bill shows that is essentially the same as the marked-up version from the earlier subcommittee hearing.

One change that I had not noted in my earlier post on the subcommittee markup is the frequent wording change from ‘pipeline’ to ‘pipeline facility’. Since this change is not made everywhere in the bill, it would seem that this was done to expand the coverage of the regulation from just the physical pipeline to include supporting infrastructure. It will take several hundred lawyers, and years of law suits to determine the effective meaning of this change.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 9-19-11

Just two hearings this week in Congress that might be of interest to the chemical security community; a pipeline safety bill markup and a DHS authorization markup. Additionally the FY 2012 continuing resolution is scheduled to come to the House floor this week.

HR 2937 Markup

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has scheduled a markup of HR 2937, Pipeline Infrastructure and Community Protection Act of 2011, on Tuesday and Wednesday. This bill is not yet available on the GPO website, but it should be the bill that was discussed in draft form in an earlier meeting before this committee. There are similar bills being considered by other committees in the House (HR 2845) and the Senate (S 275).

There are two other bills that are scheduled to be marked up in the same hearing and both are controversial bills designed to limit EPA actions. The discussion on these, if they go first, could certainly consume all of the available time and might cause a postponement of the consideration of HR 2937. The two day format described on the Committee web site does not really alleviate this potential problem since the first day of the hearing is only for the presentation of opening statements by committee members.

S 1546 Markup

As I mentioned in my blog post on the introduction of S 1546 the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will be holding their second day of markup hearings on the DHS authorization bill on Wednesday.

Continuing Resolution Status

Rather than doing a separate very short blog post on the status of HJ Res 79, the FY 2012 CR, I’ll just report here that the Majority Leader’s web site notes that the bill will be brought to the floor for consideration on Wednesday.