Cost of Stalling Pipeline Safety

Investigators may need time to find the cause of a natural gas pipeline inferno in the southeast New Mexico desert that killed 11 campers and left only one survivor. But there should be no waiting for a thorough safety assessment of the rest of the nation’s aging system of underground natural gas and petroleum pipelines.

Saturday’s predawn incident should also give a push to Congress, where eight pipeline safety bills introduced between November 1999 and July 2000 have stalled. Some of the bills, introduced by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others, would order periodic pipeline safety testing and more pipeline operator training. It should be noted, however, that the 50-year-old El Paso Natural Gas Co. line had undergone and passed a recent inspection. Whatever the cause, the explosion of the 30-inch-diameter pipeline turned it into a giant blowtorch, according to investigators, that produced heat so intense it fused sand into glass and reduced concrete to powder. Trapped between the conflagration and the Pecos River, the family campers really never had a chance.

The accident, whatever the cause, should also increase pressure on one of the most criticized federal regulatory agencies, the Office of Pipeline Safety, part of the Transportation Department. A federal report last spring excoriated the Pipeline Safety Office for failing to implement an improved inspection procedure required by a 1992 law for highly populated areas. The office hasn’t even completed a national map of underground pipelines, several of which pass through urban areas. Imagine the scope of the disaster if an explosion like Saturday’s had occurred in a city.

The nation has some 2.2 million miles of pipelines that carry natural gas or hazardous liquids, including oil. The lives so horrifyingly lost along the Pecos River can’t be brought back, but Congress and the Transportation Department should face the dangers of poor pipeline regulation. Tougher safety rules and stringent oversight of the Office of Pipeline Safety are issues that cannot be brushed aside again.