NTSB Safety Recommendation Letter P-87-028

Page 1Official PDFNational Transportation Safety Board Washington, D.C. 20594 Safety Recommendation Date: September 9, 1987 In reply refer to: P-87-28 Honorable Elizabeth H. Dole Secretary Department of Transportation Washington, D.C. 20590 About 4:20 a.m. on July 8, 1986, line 2N, an 8-inch products pipeline operated by Williams Pipe Line Company at Mounds View, Minnesota, ruptured. Unleaded gasoline under 1,434 psig spewed from a 7 1/2-foot-long opening along t h e longitudinal Sean of the pipe. Vaporized gasoline combined with air and liquid gasoline flowed along neighborhood streets. About 20 minutes later, the gasoline vapor was ignited when an automobile entered the area. Following an explosion-like noise, fire spread rapidly along the path of the liquid gasoline. Two persons were burned severely and later died, and one person suffered serious burns. There was substantial property damage and soil and water pollution. - 1/ At present, Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) must depend on voluntary compliance with the Federal regulations to ensure the safety of the public from pipeline accidents. There simply are not enough pipeline investigators to effectively inspect everv operator annually and to perform their other duties. To perform inspections of each operator in the central region each year would require 272 inspection days, 47 days more than the approximately 225 inspection days the central region had available. (The number of available inspection days was determined based on two inspectors devoting 60 percent of their time.) If the "mere presence" of OPS is to have the effect of encouraging operators to comply with the pipeline safety regulations, then its efforts need to call more attention to its presence. Therefore, its efforts must motivate compliance by operators with the pipeline safety regulations. While a change in OPS' enforcement policy is necessary, that alone will not correct all the problems with the enforcement program. To adeqaately protect public safety, OPS staffing needs to be augmented. A t the time of the accident a t Mounds View, the OPS had only 16 inspectors nationwide. In the central region, which has complete responsibility for the WPL pipeline system, there were two inspectors available to inspect 113 interstate pipeline operators and to monitor the intrastate pipeline safety inspection and enforcement program for 10 States. - _I_--- - 1TFor more w e d information, read Pipeline Accident Report-"Williams Pipe Line Company Liquid Pipeline Rupture and Fire, Mounds View, Minnesota, July 8, 1986" (NTSB/PAR-87/02). 4442C/860-16#

Page 2-2- The Safety Board believes this number of inspectors is insufficien thorough, periodic reviews of each operator. Additionally, just perf review would allow no time for analyses of the various operators determine which ones require compre comprehensive monitoring, to participate to respond to public reports of potentially Considering that only 11 States now serve as agents for the OPS in interstate natural gas pipelines, finding ways to obtain similar status f would greatly expand the number of inspectors available to the consideration should be given to providing inspection powers to the Sta liquid pipeline operations. Therefore, as a result of its investigation, the National Transportation Saf recommends that the Department of Transportation: Increase, through the use of State inspection personnel and by increa the number of Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) inspectors, the pipeline inspection capability sufficient to perform thor safety reviews of all pipeline operations directly subject to OPS monitoring and to perform timely, effective, followup compliance reviews of those operations in which compliance deficiencies are identified. (Class 11, Priority Action) (P-87-28) Also, the Safety Board issued Safety Recommendations P-87-1 Williams Pipe Line Company, P-87-20 to the American Petroleum through -27 to the Office of Pipeline Safety. The Bo Recommendation P-84-26 to the Research and Special Programs Administration. BURNETT, Chairman, GOLDMAN, Vice Chairman, and LAUBER, NALL,KOLSTAD, Members, concurred in these recommendations.#