Monitoring Government: Pipeline repair rule update

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is proposing substantial changes in federal safety repair requirements for natural gas and hazardous liquids pipelines for the first time in two decades.

“Thanks to cutting-edge inspection technology and data, pipeline operators understand their systems better than ever before. PHMSA is modernizing our safety regulations to match this new landscape,” said PHMSA Administrator Paul Roberti in a July 6 announcement. “Prioritizing repairs to target actual threats–rather than sticking to prescriptive, one-size-fits-all timelines–will improve safety and unleash American energy.”

Brian Ford

The updates will apply data-driven modern engineering concepts for energy operators to determine where and when repairs for things like cracks, dents and corrosion are needed, according to PHMSA. The proposal would enhance worker and community safety and at the same time save money for pipeline operators, according to the federal agency.

With the proposed changes, gas transmission pipeline operators are expected to see between US$214.6 million and US$241.7 million in cost savings each year, PHMSA said in its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), while hazardous liquid and carbon dioxide pipeline operators can expect to experience annual cost savings of US$148.5 million.

Citing advancements in technology and safety practices over the past two decades using modern engineering modeling, the proposed updates prioritize remediation based on how long pipes can safely remain in service and aim to avoid expensive and unnecessary grid outages.

PHMSA said the proposal also would streamline compliance timelines into three “clear and consistent” categories across all systems: immediate, near-term (1 year for high-consequence areas), and other conditions.

Much has happened over the past 20 years to enable the updates, according to the proposed rulemaking notice. In the early 2000s, PHMSA created integrity management (IM) programs for gas transmission and hazardous liquid pipelines. Both programs included criteria for responding to pipeline anomalies.

The requirements—which today apply to 41% of hazardous liquid and less than 18% of gas mileage in high consequence areas (HCAs) and other higher risk locations—used generic depth measurements “that did not account for the specific anomaly or the operating parameters of the pipeline,” PHMSA said. “That approach has forced costly repair of pipelines in good serviceable condition, interrupting service for consumers and disrupting other proactive operational activities.”

HCAs are specific locales and areas where a release could have the most significant adverse consequences. HCAs for natural gas transmission pipelines focus on populated areas.

Thanks to technological advancements, in-line inspection (ILI) tools can now detect more pipeline anomalies with a higher degree of certainty, even interacting threats and previously unreliably detected threats, according to the rulemaking notice.

In 2022, PHMSA amended its gas pipeline response criteria to incorporate some of the more modern, engineering-based concepts.

“In this proceeding, PHMSA proposes to complete that work and to extend the same concepts to hazardous pipelines,” it said.

The original response criteria in the integrity management rules from the early 2000s “reflected the limited assessment technology and evaluation methods available at the time” the agency said in its rulemaking notice. Relying on traditional measurements, the response times for these criteria largely were not based on the anomaly’s remaining safe life. In-line inspection tools analytical methods “were not sufficiently mature to produce high-resolution anomaly profiles reliably, to detect and classify interacting threats (such as selective seam weld corrosion and dents with interacting features), or to predict the remaining life of cracks and dents.

As a result, the response margins in the original integrity management rules required remediation of anomalies “in advance of what would otherwise be necessary to maintain pipeline integrity in many cases.”

PHMSA said it sought public feedback in May 2025 on improving anomaly response requirements for gas and hazardous liquid pipelines. Public response “overwhelmingly favored modernizing these requirements to incorporate a performance-based, engineering-focused approach—one that prioritizes anomalies based on calculated predicted failure pressure, strain, and remaining life rather than one-dimensional thresholds.”

Industry organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute and GPA Midstream have lauded the proposed updates.

PHMSA has made a number of updates in recent years for pipeline safety requirements. In January, it published a new rule aimed at modernizing class location regulations for gas transmission lines. The rule will allow natural gas transmission operators to use integrity management practices as an alternative to traditional pressure reductions or pipeline replacements. The alternative allows operators to confirm or restore the maximum allowable operating pressure of certain eligible pipeline segments without replacing pipe or reducing operating pressure.