Senate passes pipeline safety bill

The U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a pipeline safety bill that calls for automatic shut-off valves on new pipelines and requires new safety inspections for pre-1970 natural gas pipelines like the one that exploded and killed eight people in San Bruno, California last year.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the bill cleared the Senate after Sen. Rand Paul, a first term Tea Party associate and anti-regulation Republican from Kentucky, released a hold that he’d placed on the bill.

The government’s so-called grandfather clause allows pre-1970 pipelines such as the one in San Bruno to escape pressure tests meant to reveal weak welds. It was an incomplete weld that ruptured on the San Bruno line in September 2010, leading to the explosion that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes.

After meeting recently with federal regulators, Paul proposed an amendment that would commit the government to requiring pressure tests or something equally effective on older lines. The Senate approved the proposal, and after Paul removed his hold on the bill, the full legislation passed.

California regulators had already repealed the grandfather clause for older pipes in the state after the San Bruno blast, but the issue had not been addressed nationally.

“The government was trying to pretend it fixed a problem that it had not even properly diagnosed,” Paul said in a statement Monday night, adding that the bill had been advancing “with no time for consideration.”

Committees in the House have passed two pipeline safety bills, which must be reconciled before the laws can be updated.

In July the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power approved pipeline safety legislation that set deadlines for updated leak detection rules and automated valve use and placement, and strengthened guidelines for river crossings, and gas gathering lines.

Last month the House Transportation Committee advanced a measure that prohibits regulators from requiring new safety tests.

Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, criticized that bill as a “partisan industry-driven effort” that ignores recent safety recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board.

NTSB has been investigating the San Bruno explosion, the Enbridge oil spill in the Kalamazoo River and other recent pipeline disasters.