Federal regulators must account for response times in the data they collect from transmission operators on natural gas pipeline incidents, a congressional watchdog agency said this week.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which oversees natural gas, oil and hazardous liquids pipelines in the U.S., doesn’t require operators to fill out certain time-related fields when reporting incidents. Operators also have indicated they interpret the data fields in different ways.
“Reliable data would improve PHMSA’s ability to measure incident response and assist the agency in exploring the feasibility of developing a performance-based approach for improving operator response to pipeline incidents,” the report said.
The report comes a month after a 20-inch line owned by Columbia Gas Transmission ruptured in West Virginia, triggering a massive fire. The Dec. 11 inferno destroyed four homes and charred a section of Interstate 77 near Sissonville, about 15 miles north of Charleston. No one was seriously injured.
Federal investigators say it took Columbia Gas Transmission, a subsidiary of Texas-based NiSource Gas Transmission & Storage, more than an hour to manually shut off the gas that fueled the fire, which sent flames as high as nearby hilltops.
And in September 2010, gas continued to escape for nearly 90 minutes after a ruptured pipeline exploded in a suburb of San Francisco. The explosion, which was blamed on an inferior pipeline weld, killed eight people and destroyed dozens of homes. Investigators said the damage would have been less severe had automatic valves been in place.
The National Transportation Safety Board has long advocated requiring automated valves that could shut off gas in such situations within minutes. Currently, manual valves are required at intervals
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