Unsafe Pipelines Continued

...Virtually every accident was preventable. The causes were unique combinations of failures by the industry to adopt better pipeline company siting and construction standards, inspection and maintenance measures, leak detection and prevention technologies, operator training and procedures, and prevention of encroachment by urban development on rights-of-way. Even more tragic, the federal Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) allowed this neglect to continue by ignoring the problem itself, not to mention its responsibility to solve it — to the extent that OPS even today does not have maps of all pipelines it regulates.

Inadequate regulation is obviously a major cause. While tankers and barges are regulated by a U.S. Coast Guard of some 35,000 uniformed personnel and 10,000 civilians — oil and natural gas pipelines are regulated by the U.S. Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS), with barely 80 personnel. The Pipeline Safety Act and the OPS regulations that implement it are so lax that the industry is virtually self-regulated. Under the powerful influence of the oil and natural gas industry, Congress in the past decade has weakened pipeline regulation.

However, at the heart of these problems is lack of public awareness. With a few notable exceptions, news media cover pipeline accidents as if they are acts of nature, such as tornadoes, which cannot be prevented. Accurate information about pipeline industry problems remains difficult for even industry experts to review. The goal of this section is to raise public awareness and thus enable the public to demand a level of pipeline safety we need and deserve.