NATURAL GAS PIPELINE SAFETY

The natural gas and gas pipeline industries insist that natural gas pipelines are safe. For example:

The American Gas Association (AGA): According to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), natural gas and petroleum liquids pipelines are the safest method of transporting energy. [1]

The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA): The companies that build and operate natural gas pipelines have created the safest mode of transportation today, surpassing highway, rail, air and water. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) statistics show the pipeline industry to be the safest in the country in terms of fatalities per year. [2].

These statements are correct only in the most superficial way. While it is true that gas pipeline presence and operation do present low risk to the bystander, the implication that these pipelines are inherently safe is grossly misleading. The current safety level of natural gas pipelines is maintained only with considerable effort and expense. Natural gas has the potential to do great harm, and transporting it is a dangerous operation.

A more realistic picture of natural gas pipeline safety is the following:

Measuring pipeline safety in terms of transportation-related fatalities is nonsense. There is simply no logical connection or comparison between fatalities resulting from failures of systems designed to transport people and failures of systems designed to transport fluids.

The statement that pipelines are the safest method of transporting energy is simply not proveable. There are no available statistics that measure the relative safety of transporting various forms of energy on the basis of unit energy per mile transported.

Natural gas is a flammable, corrosive, toxic substance, dangerous under any but controlled conditions. Uncontrolled, it can within seconds destroy your dwelling, your livelihood, your life. No one in their right mind would handle gasoline with other than respect, but the gas industry would have us believe that natural gas is essentially harmless.

Natural gas transmission and distribution companies maintain the safety of gas systems only by continuous, careful monitoring of these systems. Installing a gas pipeline is not a matter of laying pipe and then casually keeping tabs on it. Pipeline components and pipeline construction must both meet exacting standards, and a pipeline, once installed, must be continually and rigorously monitored, inspected and maintained.

The (gas pipeline) industry spends more than $800 million a year on research, facility inspection and testing, maintenance, emergency planning and public awareness [2]. This is more than $600 for each mile of natural gas pipeline in the United States.

In the United States there are 46,100 miles of natural gas gathering pipe, 255,000 miles of transmission pipe (like the NYSEG and Iroquois proposed pipelines), and 955,000 miles of distribution pipe, adding up to a total of 1,257,900 miles [3]. Between 1986 and June, 1999, this system experienced 2,884 accidents resulting in 280 deaths and 1294 injuries, and which cost $433,621,270 in property damage [4]. This is, on average, 214 accidents, 21 deaths, 96 injuries and $32,120,094 in damage per year. On a pipeline mile basis, transmission systems are more accident prone, but distribution system accidents are deadlier. The number of accidents and the per-accident cost of property damage per mile of transmission pipeline are twice those of distribution pipeline; the numbers of deaths and injuries per mile of distribution system are about twice those of transmission systems.

Because 40% of all pipeline accidents are due to "outside forces" [4], namely damage incurred by misdirected excavation or construction near pipelines, pipeline accidents are more likely to occur in settled areas than in remote ones. One of the primary programs of the US Department of Transportation's Office of Pipeline Safety is promoting public awareness of this aspect of pipeline vulnerability [5].

Natural gas pipeline accidents tend to be spectacular, devastating, frightening, and above all, memorable. One of the primary items of discussion at any natural gas pipeline hearing, particularly among those who have seen or experienced a pipeline explosion, is the question of pipeline safety, and of what steps the pipeline company will be taking to avoid similar devastation.