It seems that no part of the federal government is exempt from Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “chainsaw” that’s cutting federal agency budgets and firing staff, and using that money to fund huge tax cuts mostly benefiting the rich.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, is a tiny federal agency under the Department of Transportation tasked with ensuring the safety of the country’s three million miles of gas, oil and other pipelines. Due to the Trump-Musk DOGE, cuts more than half of PHMSA’s senior leadership are leaving the agency. This comes as 2023 through 2024 was the deadliest two-year period for pipeline accidents in over a decade.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a non-profit based in Bellingham, Washington, that was established in the wake of a gasoline explosion on the Olympic pipeline that killed three children in 1999. The Trust serves as a national watchdog on both companies and regulators. Here, Caram talks about the inclusion, or not, of the odorant mercaptan in gas pipelines that can warn nearby residents of leaks. He also addresses the problems that already exist with PHMSA and how the situation will likely get far worse under the Trump administration plan to deregulate the energy industry and expand pipeline construction.
BILL CARAM: The odorant is required in distribution systems that bring gas service into homes and businesses. That’s generally a low-pressure system, as opposed to the transmission pipeline, which are the high-pressure pipelines that move the methane over long distances. Odorant is not required to be in those pipelines, by and large. There are some exceptions; some states require them to be in their intra-state pipelines. There’s a couple reasons for that. One is that leakage – the kind of leaks that do threaten a home where methane will leak and travel underground and gather in an enclosed space and eventually ignite – that’s less likely to happen on a high-pressure transmission pipeline than the lower-pressure distribution systems. Those distribution systems are closer to homes, generally, where they pose more of a threat. Also, mercaptan does have a slight corrosive effect on pipelines and that can be mitigated against, so they generally don’t require it in transmission pipelines. We would still like to see it in transmission pipelines, but there are reasons they don’t require it.
MELINDA TUHUS: You said you’d like to see it. Do you think it’s a safety issue?
BILL CARAM: Yes. When I say it’s less likely to happen, it certainly is, versus a distribution system, but that doesn’t mean it never happens.
MELINDA TUHUS: There was a big explosion of a gas pipeline a few years ago in West Virginia, which created this gigantic fireball.
BILL CARAM: There was another large release maybe a month ago in West Virginia; a couple years ago in Virginia. They don’t tend to have slow leaks over time, which is where an odorant can be helpful. It tends to be a rupture, all at once, and the odorant is not necessarily helpful in that situation.
MELINDA TUHUS: Bill Caram, has the Trump administration taken any action regarding pipeline safety?
BILL CARAM: As of now there are no leak detection requirements on gas pipelines and that includes the big high-pressure transmission pipelines. Operators are required to do patrols periodically, but most of those don’t involve leak detection equipment and those that do involve leak detection equipment, there’s no standards about how sensitive or accurate or reliable that equipment needs to be.
And so we have no idea really how much methane is leaking from these pipelines, and odorant is a way to let people know that there is some gas coming out of the pipeline. As you’re well aware, methane is such a potent greenhouse gas that we really need to know. So, the Biden administration in its final weeks they finally put out a final rule about leak detection equipment and set standards on it and how often operators needed to be surveying their pipelines and how quickly they needed to fine the leaks that they found – none of that exists right now. That rule was pulled from the Federal Register in the first weeks of the Trump administration and we have no idea when that may return, but it leaves a big hole in pipeline safety and pipelines’ impact on climate change.
MELINDA TUHUS: And what about cuts to PHMSA, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration?
BILL CARAM: The retirement package – the fork in the road offer – and the termination of probationary employees, all that is a concern at the agency. It’s especially a concern at PHMSA because they are a notoriously underfunded, under-resourced agency.
There are more miles of pipeline in America than miles of paved road and overseeing all of that is this tiny, tiny agency in the Department of Transportation: 600 employees, only half of them dedicated to pipelines, so we’re talking 300 employees with over 3 million miles of pipelines that they’re trying to oversee. They don’t have enough resources, they don’t have enough staff, so every bit of that agency is really geared around safety.
They’ve said, “Oh, the inspectors are not subject to this because we don’t want to jeopardize safety by terminating inspectors.” Sure, you have the inspectors, but you also have the accident investigation team, you have the research and development department – they’re all focused on safety and the loss of any of them is going to have an impact on safety.
For more information, visit the Pipeline Safety Trust at pstrust.org.
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