During a House Energy Committee hearing before the Congressional Recess, Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-CA) asked Executive Director of the Pipeline Safety Trust Bill Caram about measures to make pipelines safer today than they were a decade ago.
00:00Now recognizes the gentleman from California's 15th district for five minutes for questions.
00:05Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses today.
00:09This is an incredibly important topic to my district.
00:12Fifteen years ago, a natural gas pipeline exploded in the Glenview neighborhood of San Bruno,
00:17just a few miles from my home in South San Francisco.
00:20Eyewitnesses said that the fireball shot over 1,000 feet into the air.
00:24The blast killed eight people, injured dozens more, and destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes.
00:30The impact on the community was devastating and long-lasting, and it's exactly why we need to get this right.
00:37An NTSB report concluded that, quote,
00:39no one knew whether the pipeline under San Bruno was safe, not the utility, not the state regulators, and not the federal regulators, end quote.
00:48They went on to call it a failure of the entire system, a system of checks and balances that should have prevented this disaster.
00:56So, Mr. Karam, can you walk us through the root causes of the 2010 San Bruno explosion,
01:02specifically the organizational breakdowns and regulatory gaps that allowed such a catastrophe to occur?
01:10Well, I can do my best.
01:11It's been a little while since I've looked at that NTSB report, but I recognize we're coming up on 15 years in September,
01:21and my heart goes out to that community and your community.
01:25There was a section of pipe there that I don't think a lot of operators would consider pipe,
01:32and because of the lack of initial testing standards, you know, requiring to pressure test that pipe,
01:40it was never allowed to fail under that hydro test to discover that it wasn't capable of handling that pressure of natural gas.
01:51A lot of that came from acquisitions and lack of record-keeping through acquisitions from company to company.
02:01And so the NTSB report had a long list of recommendations on how operators could get to know their system
02:08to make sure that they would be able to identify if there were that kind of rogue pipe somewhere in their system susceptible to fail.
02:16And PHMSA has, it took a long time, but they have enacted a series of rulemakings in response to those recommendations,
02:24and there are some real improvements in those regulations that they've passed.
02:29Unfortunately, because of the non-application clause and cost-benefit,
02:33not all of the NTSB recommendations were able to be implemented by PHMSA, some of those key recommendations.
02:40Thank you for that.
02:42So under the Trump administration, PHMSA's enforcement actions have dropped to record lows,
02:47and nearly all of the agency's senior career staff has left.
02:50The agency has also delayed publishing a rule on gas leaks.
02:54Instead of prioritizing safety, unfortunately, the administration has proposed slashing PHMSA's budget by $16 million
02:59and threatened to withhold funding from your organization, Mr. Karam, the Pipeline Safety Trust.
03:06So given all of that, my question is to you again, sir,
03:09what does Congress need to do to ensure that pipelines are actually safer today than they were 15 years ago?
03:17I think Congress serves a critical oversight role, authorizing the appropriate level of funding,
03:25appropriating that funding, and then overseeing how they are implementing the Pipeline Safety Act.
03:35Hearings such as this can do that.
03:40Hearings with PHMSA would be helpful as well.
03:43Congress asked PHMSA to, in its oversight role, asked PHMSA to produce a web chart showing its progress towards all of the mandates towards rulemaking
03:56and required that that be updated on a monthly basis.
04:00I think that's a key piece of oversight.
04:03It's also key for members of the public to really see where those rulemakings are prioritized.
04:09And the last time I checked, that hadn't been updated since January.
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