Insist on pipeline safety measures

Insist on pipeline safety measures

Monday, August 2, 1999

Members of Congress are learning along with the rest of us that underground gas and oil pipelines are not as safe as we've been led to believe.

Unlike the rest of us, members of Congress not only can do something about it, they have a duty to do so. So we expect to see all members of our own state's delegation vigorously engaged in pursuit of new pipeline safety measures, not just Rep. Jack Metcalf and Sen. Patty Murray. After all, pipelines cross nearly all of this state's congressional districts.

The laws governing pipeline safety are due to be re-enacted by Congress next year. But the June 10 explosion in Bellingham has focused congressional attention on pipeline safety well in advance of the present laws' expiration. So there's little excuse for failing to pass laws that ensure meaningful oversight of pipelines.

In thrall to the oil and gas industry, Congress has been derelict in this matter far too long. The oil and gas industry for decades has resisted efforts to make its pipelines more safe.

For an astounding 29 years, for example, the industry has kept the federal Office of Pipeline Safety from adopting a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation to require the installation of automated valves that would speed the shutdown of leaking pipes. For 12 years, it has kept at bay the NTSB's recommendation that OPS require regular inspections of pipeline integrity. The industry also has forestalled an equally time-encrusted NTSB call for improved pipeline personnel training.

NTSB chairman Jim Hall told Congress the OPS has ignored congressional directives and failed in its mission to protect public safety. He contends the Bellingham accident could have been prevented if the OPS had adopted the NTSB's safety recommendations.

Congress must see to it that OPS does its job.

Here's how:

Implement NTSB recommendations; 48 are awaiting adoption.

Stop the insidious practice of allowing the industry to, in effect, police itself.
Conduct more frequent and thorough safety inspections.
Adequately fund the OPS; inspectors must be placed in close proximity to the nation's 2 million miles of buried lines. The permanent OPS inspector closest to Washingon is in Denver.
Despite the cautionary example provided by three deaths in the Bellingham explosion, the oil and gas industry can be expected to continue resisting any safety improvements it considers costly or nationally precedent-setting. That's clear from Olympic Pipe Line Co. officials in recent days.
The company, owned by Texaco, Atlantic Richfield, Shell Oil and Gatex, a terminal operations firm, had the cheek to ask OPS to retract its request for the company to survey the coating inside its pipeline as a condition for reopening the line.
And this company -- the same one that's been pledging to leave no stone unturned in ensuring public safety -- nevertheless asked OPS to allow it to test the hydrostatic pressure of the line only in Bellingham, not the entire length of its pipe.
With three deaths on their hands, the owners of Olympic are in no position to ask safety inspectors to back off any request. If they were as concerned about public safety as they should be, they would have been racing down that line to test every inch of it without being asked.
So far, the OPS has held firm in its insistence on the tests as a condition of reopening the line.
Perhaps the Bellingham accident belatedly stiffened the agency's gelatinous spine.