00:00The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Colorado's 8th district for five minutes for questions.
00:07Thank you, Mr. Cool.
00:08Thank you, Mr. Chair, ranking member, of course, also to our witnesses for coming.
00:13Again, you heard Colorado's 8th congressional district.
00:15So we've got 80% of the oil, 50% of the natural gas in Colorado.
00:19That's from the hole in the ground through midstream, through we've got the only refinery in Colorado,
00:25and then final distribution to the end users.
00:28And so a lot of that obviously happens through pipelines, and we know.
00:32We've heard in the commentary today, pipelines, safest way to move this liquid energy around in terms of accidents.
00:40I want to make sure we also highlight the emissions.
00:42We had an incident in Colorado where some of that local distribution that relies on the pipelines went down during a really, really hard freeze.
00:52And so to backfill all of that energy that couldn't be transported via pipeline for a few months,
00:58it was thousands and thousands of trucks keeping the Denver metro area going in the dead of winter.
01:04We've talked, obviously, about the wear and tear that that has on the roadway and traffic safety when you have that massive increase of vehicles.
01:11But I want to make sure that the emissions component of that isn't lost when we're talking about the climate
01:16and the fact that pipelines are, again, one of the lowest emission sources, ways of moving some of this energy around.
01:25They alleviate that critical demand on our electrical infrastructure because backfilling, you know,
01:31in my area, all of the heat that comes from natural gas combustion, which is what heats a lot of homes in my area,
01:39backfilling that with electrical demand is incredibly difficult and challenging and costly to a lot of our consumers in Colorado.
01:47We've unfortunately seen a first in the nation mandated so-called beneficial electrification plan for a major utility in Colorado
01:57mandating that even though they're not an electrical provider, they do natural gas distribution to customers,
02:02they have to have this so-called beneficial electrical plan, which is raising costs for consumers
02:09by dropping those heavy-handed mandates on consumers who want energy choice and want to be able to choose what works best for them,
02:16their family, and their budget.
02:17So my first question will be to Mr. Moriarty.
02:20Can you just talk a little bit about the impact to consumers and to consumers' pocketbooks from that utility perspective
02:28with the current program that we have of making sure that our pipelines are regulated,
02:33that, as we've heard, safest way to move this energy around?
02:36But can you talk a little bit about the impact to the customers if we were to take a different path
02:41and have more regulatory burden on pipelines?
02:45Well, thank you for that question.
02:46All the costs that go in to delivering energy are recovered from our customers through state commission rate proceedings.
02:56One way that we've avoided higher costs is to construct LNG storage facilities to meet peak day demand.
03:05So you were talking about freeze-offs.
03:07We would have an LNG storage facility that would be available.
03:10We have one in Florida as well as one now we're building on Delmarva.
03:15Yeah, thank you for that.
03:17And then next question will be to Mr. Black.
03:21Obviously, pipeline safety, top of mind for everybody.
03:24We've talked a lot about it.
03:25And so I just want this to be our, I think, our final thought for this hearing here.
03:30We need an empowered entity to step up and take action against bad actors that put the public safety at risk.
03:35And so that's why I was glad to see that PHMSA announced revisions to its pipeline safety enforcement actions last month to improve transparency and fairness.
03:44And so can you just comment on those changes, how they alter the enforcement dynamics for operators?
03:50And just talk a little bit about the evidentiary record process as well.
03:54Congress has recognized there are failings in how PHMSA has managed its administrative enforcement program.
04:01In the 2020 Pipes Act, Congress mandated that PHMSA improve its procedures, including making the case file available to a respondent in a case.
04:10Then PHMSA in the last administration failed to do that.
04:13It happened episodically, sometimes not others, and it wasn't really codified in PHMSA's regulations.
04:19And so PHMSA has now, in the last month, as you say, improved that.
04:24It's a level playing field.
04:25That's all pipeline operators are asking for, due process, when PHMSA exerts its administrative enforcement program.
04:32Because pipeline operators know that PHMSA needs to be active and deter unsafe operations and give Congress and the American public confidence that they are, on that case, making sure that we have a safe network.
04:43Well, with our final 24 seconds, I guess I'll just close with, I think we've heard safety is top of mind.
04:49In this space, we have that record of safety.
04:51We have that record of being responsible toward the climate, because this is one of the lowest emission ways to move energy around.
04:58It's cost effective for consumers.
05:01And then in my district, this provides high quality jobs for a high quality workforce that maintain these pipelines.
05:07And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
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