Pipeline Safety

Originally published on 3/15/07

On March 15, 2007, the Federal Department of Transportation published in the Federal Register a final rule defining a gathering lines and how some onshore gathering lines should be regulated. The rule becomes, effective April 14th, 2006.

Important to producers is that the rule adopts by reference API Recommended Practice 80 — an industry-wide consensus standard that defines gathering lines. RP-80 provides a clear definition of a production facility so that it easily understood the point where production ends and gathering begins. All facilities used to transfer natural gas during production operations are not subject to federal pipeline safety regulation.

This issue started back in 1974, when DOT tried to revise the definition of a gathering line. In doing so, latent ambiguities were discovered with several of the key terms and phrases. This was a problem even in 1986, when the National Association of Pipeline Safety Representatives (NAPSR) surveyed their members and claimed lingering disagreements with operators over gathering lines. Spurred by this survey, the DOT in 1991 once again tried to define a gathering line. When these definitions were released, public comments were relatively negative and the rule was “delayed to gather further information”.

The following year, Congress directed the DOT to come up with a definition of a gathering line for the purposes of safety regulation. As such, the DOT was told to consider functional and operational characteristics, along with other factors such as location, length, operating pressure, throughput and gas composition in deciding which lines would be regulated.

This directive led to a 1999 public discussion on the still undecided 1991 rule. The comments in this discussion were based upon API RP 80. During this process, several comments were filed, most claiming the best way to regulate is to adopt the API RP 80 definitions. In the end, the DOT agreed with this claim but added five small exceptions.

The DOT explained that by adopting RP-80, it is not intended to move the beginning of gathering any further upstream from the production-operation-endpoint determination reached through an RP-80 analysis. Thus, the new rule would mean that all facilities usually considered production facilities are excluded from DOT regulation and most independent producers will not have any DOT regulation of their natural gas production systems.

The gathering line regulatory program only applies to facilities that first are defined as gathering facilities in RP-80. The final rule defines two types of regulated onshore gathering lines. Type A lines are more strictly regulated, applying largely the rules that apply to gas transmission lines. However, there is an exception for the rules governing the passage of smart pigs and integrity management. Type B lines must only comply with certain construction, corrosion control, damage prevention, public education, and line marking requirements. Type B lines must also establish a maximum allowable operating pressure if metallic. These definitions are based upon the public risk factors surrounding these lines.

On the state level, the Ohio Revised Code had been amended in 1993 to assure that should a federal definition on gathering lines be created, it would be accepted as such by Ohio. Oil and gas producers and regulators, authorized to oversee federal regulation in Ohio but limited to the federal definitions, differed on a definition due to the ambiguity of what constitutes a gathering line. The issue was resolved when rules were created accepting the federal definition of a gathering line per the federal registry rules.