'Nobody Wants That': Randy Weber Decries High Safety Risk Of Transporting Natural Gas By Highway

5 months ago

During a House Energy Committee hearing before the Congressional Recess, Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) asked President and Chief Executive Officer of the Liquid Energy Pipeline Association Andrew Black about the safest method of transporting natural gas.

Transcript

00:00is back the balance of his time and the chair now recognizes the vice chair of the subcommittee

00:06the gentleman from texas for five minutes for questions thank you mr chairman uh mr black i'm

00:11going to come back to you um i want to highlight a section of your written testimony addressing

00:16pilot pipeline safety quote a 2018 report prepared by femsa analyzing 10 years of incident data

00:22found pipelines were 13 times safer than both trains and trucks with pipelines experiencing

00:28one incident for every 720 million gallons rail incidents occurring every 50 million gallons

00:37delivered pipelines are the safest way to move this product agreed absolutely yeah and then you

00:42also talked about an obama administration analysis found rejecting a major pipeline shipping the same

00:49crude oil by rail would increase the risk of oil release by over 800 times and barrels released

00:56by 2.6 times very very important information the keystone pipeline would have come into my

01:02district the gulf coast of texas over by beaumont texas port arthur to be exact um we know that we

01:08can move product cleanly and nobody wants and i think in one of the other witnesses testimony there

01:15was 18 or 30 something people killed in the last year i think if i recall that correctly and that's

01:22so sad nobody wants that nobody nobody is for that i mean everybody wants to do everything they can

01:28to prevent that i mean my gosh we had a recent you know weather event in texas where over 300

01:33people lost their lives it's always sad um so i i would say that we want if you looked at the traffic

01:40records of last year and this is by the way this is nhtsa's information last year in 2024 39 000

01:48people lost their lives in traffic everybody hates that nobody wants that everybody wants to do as

01:53safe as they can and that goes with pipelines would you agree yes americans use liquid fuels every day

02:00and if you cancel a pipeline we're still going to use those fuels they're going to move on to other

02:04modes that are less safe right and let me go back to the keystone pipeline keystone pipeline coming into

02:08my district would have carried 830 000 barrels of product a day yes if you do if you divided that up

02:15into 18 wheelers it's over 5 318 wheelers on the highway a day what does that increase the chance

02:24of more and more people being killed on the highway so nobody wants that obama shut down the keystone

02:30pipeline of course president trump got it back up and running and then biden shut it down too so i'm

02:36going to go back to your your report uh you said pipelines are down 30 over the last five years and

02:42they remain the safest method to move product and we are always striving to improve that record how

02:48can congress ensure that femsa is equipped to modernize its regulations in step with industry

02:54innovation without imposing restrictions that could honder hinder progress how do we do that

03:00well several steps one is to permanently reform the special permit program as you know there's so many

03:04different pipeline operating conditions and types of pipes sometimes

03:08uh phimsa regulations are not one-size-fits-all for that pipe second is to reauthorize without

03:15uh bureaucratic uh problems the pipeline safety technology demonstration program that we were talking

03:23other and then to keep femsa focused on on pipeline safety and the fund uh have everybody working on r d to

03:30get us down to zero incidents it's safe to say isn't it your opinion that nobody who works in the pipeline

03:37industry or in the fossil fuel industry for that matter wants to go home from their job and find

03:44out that one of her relatives was killed on the highway nobody wants that it's the same with pipeline

03:50safety everybody who works in the industry doesn't want anybody to be killed in that endeavor

03:56miss black miss miller i'm going to come to you my district along the gulf coast has three lng export

04:01facilities a fourth across the board in louisiana so we understand the understanding is that the femsa has

04:07been working to update regulations regarding the monitoring of lng pipelines for corrosion aligning

04:12them more closely with the risk-based industry standard driven standards some estimates suggest

04:16these updates could save facilities millions of dollars annually with growing investment lng export

04:22capacity increasing global demand for us energy how can common sense updates help safety regulations

04:28very quickly turn your mic on thank you for the question yes we do agree that performance-based or

04:34risk-based measures can help facilitate smarter um safety regulation that actually achieves the the

04:42outcomes that are desired um so we agree with you that uh performance-based measures facilitate safety and

04:47you would agree that nobody wants none nobody they know no americans nobody killed on the highways and

04:53nobody killed my pipelines you'd agree with that i totally agree with that safety's first thank you mr

04:57chairman i yield back

'Nobody Wants That': Randy Weber Decries High Safety Risk Of Transporting Natural Gas By Highway

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended