October 2025 Vol. 80 No. 10
Washington Watch
PHMSA proposes broad pipeline safety rule changes to reduce costs, allow new technology
By Stephen Barlas, Washington Editor
(UI) — Without a lot of fanfare, the Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has proposed a number of changes to various current technical safety rules. These changes are aimed at reducing costs, allowing new technologies and energizing production for gas pipelines in compliance with a number of President Trump’s executive orders.
The Pipeline Safety Trust (PST) says PHMSA initiatives, taken as a whole, “…could be the broadest regulatory initiative since the inception of the federal pipeline safety code in 1970.” The PST describes itself as a nonprofit watchdog organization dedicated to protecting people and the environment from the devastating impacts of pipeline disasters.
The proposals would make it easier for pipelines to obtain special permits, changes deadlines and requirements around gas pipeline coating damage assessments and remedial actions, loosens rules for when to report property damage connected to incident reporting, and allows use of drones and satellites to patrol pipeline rights of ways.
The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) advocated for a number of these changes in May 2025 in response to a Department of Transportation request for information on potential deregulatory changes squaring with the Trump administration’s executive orders aimed at decreasing barriers to energy production. PHMSA is part of the DOT. Five proposed rules were forthcoming from the pipeline agency on various potential changes in July. The comment periods all ended in early September.
In each of those separate rulemakings, INGAA generally applauded the direction in which PHMSA was going but listed further technical changes needed in almost all instances. Regarding potential changes in the special permit application process, PHMSA has already made favorable changes ahead of the formal rulemaking. Those were evident in the special permit granted to the Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America, in July, for 16 segments in Texas.
There were various comments, including from the PST, opposing NGPC’s request and which asked PHMSA to either deny the special permit, for reasons having to do with potential higher greenhouse gas emissions, or to impose conditions. PHMSA declined to attach any significant conditions when it granted the permit in late July.
“We are disappointed to see that in granting the special permit, PHMSA did not require additional measures to be taken by NGPL for the permit other than incorporating the special permit segment into its IM program,” said Erin Sutherland, policy & program director/counsel, PST.
Probably referring to the NGPC permit, INGAA in its Sept. 3 comments recognized “…that in recent months, PHMSA has made significant improvements to the special permit review and approval process.”
INGAA also applauded the newly proposed changes, which essentially would require that any limits on a special permit relate to the risk and regulation for which the operator is seeking a special permit. But having said that, the comments, signed by Ashlin Bollacker, a former PHMSA staffer who joined INGAA last May as director of pipeline safety, wrote that INGAA is also seeking three additional changes to the special permit process: clear and consistent application requirements; a predictable review timeframe; and a reasonable renewal timeframe.
Requests
The INGAA letter to the DOT in May included numerous requests for changes to pipeline external anti-corrosion coating rules, including the requirement to use direct current voltage gradient (DCVG) surveys or alternating current voltage gradient (ACVG) surveys. It also included other technology that provides comparable information about the integrity of the pipeline's coating, “promptly” following the completion of any backfilling of the trench and in any event no later than six months following in-service date of the pipeline.
In its proposed rule, PHMSA adjusted the timeframe in which operators must perform external anti-corrosion coating assessments after pipeline installation and for any repairs following an unsatisfactory assessment result. The agency states this will result in savings for pipeline companies.
Again, INGAA called these proposed changes “meaningful improvements to regulatory clarity and operational feasibility.” However, INGAA identified several technical and safety concerns with the proposed requirements that warrant further consideration and modification. Those concerns include the failure to clearly define key terms, to address technical limitations of the current assessment methods for identifying coatings that impede cathodic protection, and inclusion of prescribed voltage criteria that are not technically sound across different coating systems.
Increasing property damage thresholds – which occasion incident reporting to the agency – would seem like a relatively small change. This is especially because the current $50,000 threshold has been around since 1994 and an inflation adjustment to $149,700 is a simple calculation.
But the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is objecting to how PHMSA wants pipelines to determine the costs of any incident to exclude “the costs associated with obtaining permits and removing or replacing infrastructure undamaged by an event.” The agency claims that this change, which was first proposed in August 2023 in the agency’s advanced leak detection (ALDR) technology rulemaking, “was subject to no controversy.”
The EDF says that is not true. It cites comments by the Pipeline Safety Trust in that 2023 rulemaking arguing permitting costs “often account for a major percentage of a project’s total impact on the public,” and should, therefore, be included in the calculation for incident reporting.
Environmental groups also disagree with some aspects of PHMSA’s plan to allow surveillance of pipeline rights-of-ways with aircraft systems and satellite surveillance, as long as they provide current information and imaging quality comparable to traditional aerial patrols.
Gas transmission pipelines must patrol rights-of-ways between one and four times each calendar year, depending on the class location of the pipeline and whether the pipeline is located at a highway or railroad crossing. Hazardous liquid pipeline operators inspect the surface conditions on or adjacent to each pipeline ROW at least 26 times each year. The inspections are to discover any leaks or damage due to excavation or earth movement.
UAV and satellite surveys are often less expensive than ground-based surveys or surveys conducted with traditional fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft. A UAV or satellite patrol is also less likely to create risks to operator personnel, particularly when compared with patrols conducted using traditional ground-based or aerial technologies. Finally, satellite and UAV patrols are also likely to have lower local air quality and noise impacts when compared with traditional methods such as UAS, which are lower in mass than traditional aircraft and often use battery-electric propulsion.
In its comments, PST said PHMSA has failed to address the observation differences and capabilities that were discussed at length in the ALDR rulemaking proceeding relative to patrols – and to the extent they apply to leak detection. It argued that to suggest that monitoring the rights of way from a satellite is equivalent to ground or even aerial-based patrolling is contrary to the public record PHMSA established on this topic.
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