December 2025 Vol. 80 No. 12
Features
Washington Watch: Chances are good for new pipeline safety bill
Conventional wisdom says Congress is paralyzed by partisan differences, but you wouldn’t know that based on the pipeline safety legislation passed by both Senate and House committees – and with significant bipartisan support.
The Senate Commerce Committee passed the PIPELINE Safety Act of 2025 (S. 2975) on Oct. 21. That was after the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee passed the Promoting Innovation in Pipeline Efficiency and Safety (PIPES) Act of 2025 (H.R. 5301) on Sept. 17, with the committee’s Republican chairman and top Democrat co-sponsoring the bill.
That Republicans are in control of both the House, the Senate and the White House, and that the bills have bipartisan support makes optimism about final passage justified – as opposed to the 2023-2024 session when Democrats held the House and White House.
Parallel provisions in the two bills, though not word-for-word, cover updated factors for state One-Call programs to guide the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) when awarding annual grants. They also establish a working group within the PHMSA on refining maximum allowable operating pressure (MAOP) requirements, and include neutral language encouraging PHMSA to complete a long-delayed rule on gas pipeline leak detection.
The House bill has sections on class location and special permit changes long sought by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA); the Senate bill does not.
Moreover, strong chances of passage seem likely because neither the House nor Senate bill does much in terms of demanding regulatory changes, either with regard to tougher safety standards or the easing of those. They are vanilla kinds of bills.
The provisions in both bills on One-Call and damage prevention grant programs at PHMSA are a good example. Neither bill requires PHMSA nor state programs to do anything more than they are currently doing. But some added pressure to improve state One-Call programs would be applied.
CGA
Sarah K. Magruder Lyle, executive director, Damage Prevention Action Center, a subsidiary of the Common Ground Alliance, said the list of safety practices PHMSA would have to look for in state programs is the most significant update in decades.
“These One-Call provisions are a recognition by Congress of the volume of underground construction this country needs to support the economy, help with President Trump’s energy domination plan, and with the rise of power data centers and their need for fiber and internet,” she said.
The one-call grants totaled just $1.4 million spread over 36 states in 2024, with the top amount being $60,000. Some states got much less, for example, New York received $1,800. But Lyle said that even relatively small amounts allow states to outreach to diggers, which might not otherwise be funded to do.
Both bills would encourage state programs to eliminate some current exemptions, for example:
- Excavation or demolition performed by the owner of a single-family residential property
- Any excavation of 18 inches or less when maintenance activities are performed
- Repairing, connecting, adjusting or conducting routine maintenance of a private or public underground utility facility
- For municipalities, public works organizations, and State departments of transportation for road maintenance
The same sections of the House and Senate bills that discuss One-Call grants also discuss state excavation damage grants, which are also funded by PHMSA via a separate program. Again, like the One-Call grants, at $1.4 million/year, the damage prevention grants are miniscule totaling $1.5 million to only 19 states in 2024.
The House provision here urges the PHMSA to assess “data reporting” by state One-Call programs on accidents by requesting disclosure of “the nature of the incident, including the facility damaged and the apparent cause of such damage (with supporting documentation); the organizations or entities involved; the impact to public safety, utility operations and customer service; and the impact to the environment.”
“When implemented, these provisions will significantly strengthen state One-Call notification programs, reducing incidents of underground utility strikes,” stated Zack Perconti, chief advocacy officer for the National Utility Contractors Association (NUCA). “NUCA through our NUCA-DIRT damage prevention program, with the Common Ground Alliance, enthusiastically supports the inclusion of these requirements, which will ensure our members’ crews can dig safely and considerably decrease the chance of strikes or accidents.”
Actually, the language on data reporting only encourages, not requires, PHMSA to “consider” whether the state has “effective management” of one-call programs including data reporting.
That kind of very gentle pressure on PHMSA characterizes most provisions in both bills. Take the section on pipeline leak detection. The 2020 Pipeline Safety Act passed by Congress told PHMSA to develop regulations requiring natural gas pipeline operators “to conduct leak detection and repair programs to meet the need for gas pipeline safety, as determined by the Secretary; and to protect the environment.”
It also required PHMSA to evaluate “protection of the environment” as a factor in its review of pipeline maintenance and operation plans, which was a significant departure from PHMSA’s historic role as solely a safety regulator.
The Biden Administration announced a final rule on Jan. 17, 2025, which required pipeline operators to establish programs to detect and repair all gas leaks, regardless of the level of risk posed by such leak. But President Trump, upon arriving in the White House, issued a memorandum “Regulatory Freeze Pending Review” which led to PHMSA withdrawing the Biden final; the pipeline industry was not particularly pleased.
The summary of H.R. 5301 states only: “the Committee and impacted parties will continue to be interested in leak detection and repair rulemaking.” The Senate bill sets deadlines for PHMSA to meet, in terms of keeping Congress informed, on its progress on issuing a final rule.
Class location regs
Another important issue for the pipeline industry over the past decade has been class location regulations. INGAA has complained that the current regulations force pipelines to make expensive, unnecessary adjustments when they are unwarranted. In 2020 PHMSA issued a proposed rule making changes which were never finalized during the Biden administration.
Earlier in 2025, in an appearance before the House Energy Committee, Eric Taylor, P.E., director, engineering services, Berkshire Hathaway Energy Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage, who represented INGAA, stated, “INGAA’s top regulatory priority with PHMSA is completion of the class location rule…”
The T&I bill requires PHMSA to finalize a rule on class location changes due to population shifts around pipelines within 90 days of enactment. Past Pipeline Safety Act bills have established deadlines for any number of provisions which PHMSA, under Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, have failed to meet.
INGAA has argued that pipelines have to apply for special permits to avoid complying with the onerous class location rules. The Trump PHMSA has already proposed some changes to special permit rules, but INGAA has argued the agency needs to go further by including clear and consistent application requirements, a predictable review timeframe, and a reasonable renewal timeframe.
The T&I bill appears to require at least some of what INGAA wants by specifying any terms placed on special permits are specific to the pipeline safety regulation being waived and establishes timelines for the consideration of special permit applications. The House bill says: “The Secretary shall impose no terms on a waiver under this paragraph that do not apply to known pipeline safety risks.” That is a reference to the Secretary of Transportation, which PHMSA is a part of. The Senate bill does not mention special permits.
In a letter to members of the House T&I Committee on Sept. 15, 2025, Amy Andryszak, INGAA’s president and CEO, cited the need to improve rules around maximum allowable operating pressure (MAOP): “At present, there remains ambiguity on the records operators would need to produce to demonstrate pipeline operability at the specified MAOP.”
The bill establishes a working group to produce a report with recommendations on the minimum pressure and contemporaneous records sufficient to reconfirm the material strength of a pipeline through prior testing, and requires a rulemaking for MAOP test records based on these recommendations. The Senate bill has a similar provision for a working group. Again, any rulemaking, much less one to INGAA’s satisfaction, probably won’t be completed during the Trump administration. If a Democrat wins the White House in 2028 all bets are off.
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