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.

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.

Pipeline Safety Discussion Draft

Yesterday I reported that the Energy and Power Subcommittee will be looking at pipeline safety in a hearing later this week. I noted that they had a link to a discussion draft of possible proposed legislation on that topic on their web site and that I would try to review that draft before the hearing. It turns out that this was easier than I had imagined since this draft is essentially the same as the reported version of S 275 that I reviewed in some detail on Sunday.

If and when this bill actually gets introduced in the House it will effectively be a companion bill to S 275. Since this is based upon the reported version of the bill, it will be closer to the final version passed in the Senate than would be a typical companion bill that is introduced at about the same time as its counterpart in the other house.

What’s more important here though is that the Republican controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee is considering sponsoring language of a companion bill to one sponsored by liberal Senator Lautenberg shows that this bill has a very good chance of passing in both houses. The Senate bill will inevitably be amended in the floor consideration and the Committee can be expected to make some revisions to their version of the bill.

The one section of the bill where there will almost certainly be differences in the two bills will be in §27, the section that provides the authorization for appropriations. We can expect that the figures in the final House version will generally be lower than in the Senate version, emblematic of the differences in fiscal policy of the two bodies. I expect that spending issue in this bill will be easier to resolve than the larger budget matters currently consuming Congress and the Administration.

It looks like the Senate may actually take up this bill before the House, so the Energy and Commerce Committee language will almost certainly be substituted for the Senate language when S 275 comes up for floor action in the House. Differences will then be worked out in Conference. Given the bipartisan support being shown here, the conference process should not be too difficult as long as this bill doesn’t get buried by the on-going spending and borrowing battle that is going on in Congress.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 5-2-11

Congress comes back to Washington from their Easter Recess this week. Currently there are only two hearings scheduled that would appear to be of potential interest to the chemical security community; one on security credentials and the other on pipeline safety.

Security Credentials

The Transportation Security Sub-Committee of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on the ‘MODERN Security Credentials Act’. The Committee web site indicates that this bill will be introduced prior to the hearing being held on Wednesday afternoon. It’s not yet clear if this will bill will require a new security credential (either to replace TWIC or provide a new ID card for non-transportation sector security) or enhance the requirements of TWIC.

Pipeline Safety

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will be holding an Executive Session on Thursday morning that will address, in addition to a long list of other bills, the markup of S. 275, the Pipeline Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2011. Any revisions to this bill will have been decided in advance and there will be little or no discussion of any amendments to be voted upon. I addressed this bill in an earlier blog post.

S 275 Introduced – Pipeline Safety

Last week Sen. Lautenberg (D, NJ) introduced S 275, the Pipeline Transportation Safety Improvement Act of 2011. While this bill has many of the same provisions found in S 234 (that I blogged about earlier) there are additional requirements in this bill, some of which address deficiencies I noted in my earlier blog.

Hazard Communications

Lautenberg’s bill {§8(a)(2)}would require PHMSA to publish (presumably on its web site, but that is not an absolute requirement) emergency response plans (with SSI information redacted/removed) that are currently required to be developed. No, it doesn’t address the problems with ERPs that I identified last year.

Incident Reporting

The legislation does require {§11(1)} the Secretary of Transportation to develop rules requiring pipeline operators to notify state and local officials when a leak or rupture occurs. It also requires the review of current procedures for coordinated notification through the National Response Center {§11(2)}.