In an action issued on November 3, and published in the Federal Register on November 16, 2011, the U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) acknowledged the concern raised by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) and the American Gas Association (AGA) regarding the quantity of data to review to comment on the Safety of Gas Transmission Pipeline Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM). The ANPRM, which covers 15 separate topic areas with several long, multi-part questions, has, in the words of PHMSA, “raised several important and complex public safety issues, many of which, if implemented, could impose significant cost on the pipeline industry.” Pipeline Safety: Safety of Gas Transmission Pipelines, 76 Fed. Reg. 70953 (Nov. 16, 2011). Because of the complexity of the ANPRM and PHMSA’s desire for thorough responses from industry, PHMSA extended the deadline for comment to January 20, 2012.
The ANPRM, Pipeline Safety: Safety of Gas Transmission Pipelines, 76 Fed. Reg. 53086 (Aug. 25, 2011), alerted the gas industry that PHMSA was considering expansion or addition of numerous Integrity Management (IM) and non-IM requirements to regulate more pipeline mileage and better protect High Consequence Areas (HCAs). As PHMSA officials remarked recently at the Pipeline Safety Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the agency does review and consider comments from individual and industry stakeholders when finalizing rules and the regulators assume the proposed rules are acceptable, necessary, and not overly burdensome if they receive no comment. As acknowledged by PHMSA, the changes proposed would significantly impact the pipeline industry; therefore, review of and comment on the proposals summarized below should be considered. The areas PHMSA is considering for change include the following...
Article authored by McAfee & Taft Attorney: Heidi Slinkard Brasher.
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