Pipeline Safety
Liquid pipelines are built to have long lives, and have had a long record of operational excellence moving crude oil, refined petroleum products, and other energy liquids over long distances. Pipelines have every incentive to invest in pipeline safety to protect against potential injury to members of the public or employees; to protect against incurring potentially costly repairs, cleanup, litigation and fines; and to ensure that customer needs are accommodated in a timely manner.
Pipeline operators work hard to share ideas for improvements and best practices, and learn from pipeline incidents. The industry has standing teams and workshops to discuss incidents and near misses, analyze data, share best practices, and make recommendations for action. See below for more about performance improvement processes.
Operators of liquid pipelines invest millions of dollars annually to maintain their pipelines and comply with federal pipeline safety laws and regulations. Since 2002, time-dependent releases (those that occur or worsen over time) are down 36%, large time-dependent releases are down 50%, and time-dependent releases from pipe installed before 1950 have decreased 83%. Releases due to causes other than time-dependent causes fell by 37% between 2002 and 2009. These statistics demonstrate that operators are managing the full array of threats and are dedicated to improving the performance of older assets.
For more information on pipeline safety, please click on the document below.
- Pipelines and Safety
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