US rejects delay to gas gathering line safety rule

President Joe Biden's administration has denied an industry request to delay by 3-5 years what it says will be first-time, "meaningful safety requirements" for an estimated 90,000 miles (56,000km) of natural gas gathering lines.

The longer that gathering lines are not subject to federal standards "the greater the cumulative risk to public safety and the environment," the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) said in a 1 April letter denying the petition. The delay request was filed last year by trade groups the American Petroleum Institute and GPA Midstream.

The safety standards remain set to take effect on 16 May, after which operators will have to begin reporting safety incidents along an estimated 400,000 miles of gas gathering lines. The operators of an estimated 90,000 miles of larger gathering lines have until 16 May 2023 to begin to comply with federal safety standards and submit annual reports.

Gathering lines were historically small enough that PHMSA exempted many of them from oversight. But over the last 15 years, many lines have been built with similar designs and pressures to long-haul transmission pipelines, PHMSA says. The US Congress first told the agency to consider the rules in 2011, but the safety rule was not finalized until last November.

In the request for a delay, industry groups said PHMSA's 18-month compliance deadline for much of the rule was unnecessarily short and would pose high costs because of supply chain constraints. But PHMSA said industry has been aware of its plans for regulation for years. The agency also said the information now subject to annual reporting is the type of data that "any responsible business" would already have available, meaning reporting it will not be a hardship.

PHMSA agreed to provide some clarifications in the rule. But it was unconvinced with industry arguments that compliance will cost operators $28bn over the next 15 years, or nearly 150 times higher than what the agency expected. PHMSA said the industry cost estimates were based on a "severely flawed cost-benefit analysis."

By Chris Knight