Regulators Look to Plug Holes in Pipeline Rules

There are 200,000 miles of oil pipelines in the United States. The Transportation Department has the authority to regulate them through its Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). It has fewer than 100 inspectors, however. As a result it relies heavily on reports from oil and pipeline companies. But pipelines like BP's transit lines are not even required to report spills.

The Transportation Department is considering an extension of its rules to low-pressure lines, and some industry sources believe a proposed rule could be issued next week. The Association of Oil Pipe Lines and the American Petroleum Institute have put forward a plan that would extend PHMSA rules to low-pressure pipelines as small as eight inches in diameter or pipelines in "unusually sensitive areas." Raymond Paul, a spokesman for the pipeline group, said 3,000 to 4,000 miles of additional pipelines would then be covered by PHMSA requirements.

Epstein believes that the PHMSA rules should cover all low-pressure pipelines, a proposal the pipeline association would want to review further. Paul of the pipeline group said applying the regulations to smaller lines "gets tricky."

Barrett said that the proposed rules will focus on the location of pipelines, not their diameter. He said they would not be identical to rules for high-pressure lines.

Pipeline regulators have gradually extended the scope of their rules. After a 500,000-gallon oil spill in Arthur Kill between New Jersey and Staten Island on Jan. 1, 1990, rules were expanded to cover commercial waterways. Regulations were revised again in 2002.

Some environmentalists believe that big oil companies should be fined for spills, and BP and other oil companies have had other spills on the North Slope. Corrosion at a caribou crossing on another BP line caused a 6,000-gallon spill in 2003, one of the biggest in Alaska that year. ConocoPhillips had two bigger spills that year. But neither company was fined, Epstein said.

But after BP's pace of repairs following its spill in March this year failed to satisfy Barrett, additional federal pipeline inspectors have been sent to oversee BP. Barrett said that when he visited Prudhoe Bay in July, "they were not moving fast enough, in my mind."

And he said that he remains puzzled that the company did nothing to clean or test its lines after realizing that sediment was building up in them. "When they were unable to complete the pigging because of concern about pushing sediment . . . that should have set off alarm bells in BP. And they should have gotten on top of the situation."

He said the agency has checked with other North Slope operators, including ConocoPhillips, and found better maintenance practices. "This is just not the standard of care I would expect and we typically don't see," he said.