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APGA is working closely with the American Gas Association, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America and American Petroleum Institute to develop comments in response to the October 2 Department of Transportation request for comment on Regulatory Reform. This request for comment is in response to the President’s Executive Order (E.O. 13771) titled “Reducing Regulation and controlling Regulatory Costs.” The E.O. states that “unless prohibited by law, whenever an executive department or agency publicly proposes for notice and comment or otherwise promulgates a new regulation, it must identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed.” The public comments submitted will assist the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) in identifying those regulations that should be reformed, thus aiding PHMSA in meeting the E.O.

The trade associations are working towards submitting joint industry comments on all regulations applicable to natural gas pipelines. The comments will be broken into four primary sections: distribution pipelines, transmission pipelines, gathering pipelines, and a section dedicated to commenting on regulatory reform initiatives already underway at PHMSA. A few of the reform suggestions for distribution pipelines include: risk based approach to atmospheric corrosion inspections, removing the requirement for line markers on Class 1 & 2 distribution pipelines, and raising the threshold to $100,000 for incident reporting. Comments are due November 1, 2017.

For questions on this article, please contact Erin Kurilla of APGA staff by phone at 202-905-2904 or by email at ekurilla@apga.org.