[The following article by API Pipeline Director Peter Lidiak appeared as a letter to the Common Ground Alliance (CGA) membership in the February 2007 CGA newsletter.]
Teams accomplish more than individuals, and the Common Ground Alliance takes the team concept to a higher level. That’s important because stakeholders in underground facility safety have more to achieve to fully protect their facilities and keep employees and the public as safe as possible.
CGA, the pipeline industry, and other industries and stakeholders have set high goals for safety. While we haven’t completely reached them, impressive progress has been made. Through CGA best practices, improved API standards and recommended practices, more education, enhanced facility inspection and maintenance, and improved data collection and analysis, we in the liquids pipeline industry are driving down incidents that damage pipelines and sometimes cause injuries and fatalities.
API’s Pipeline Performance Tracking System (PPTS), a voluntary incident reporting program that accounts for about 85 percent of interstate oil pipeline mileage and volume throughput, shows that total incidents and volume are down by half between 1999 and 2004.
But PPTS also highlights areas of concern. Small spill numbers fell, but the number of larger volume spills remained essentially unchanged. Third party damage caused a disproportionate number of the largest spills on the right-of-way and led to 40 percent of injury incidents and 60 percent involving fatalities. The data also reveal that the entities most aware of One-Call Systems frequently caused incidents. Utilities accounted for 17 percent and pipelines for 11 percent of all incidents.
The pipeline industry is refocusing and strengthening its safety initiatives with help from CGA and others. The API/AOPL Performance Excellence Team recently conducted a workshop on damage prevention that examined best practices in the areas of technology, management practices, and field practices, allowing operators to share practices. CGA’s agricultural outreach program has been educating the agricultural community on its important role in digging safely. Pipeline companies have upgraded their public awareness programs in compliance with DOT’s regulations incorporating API Recommended Practice 1162. API is modifying PPTS to collect liquid pipeline damage information for transmission to the Damage Information Reporting Tool (DIRT) program beginning with 2007 incidents. And we are all preparing for the new era of 8-1-1.
Our aim is incident-free operations – an ambitious, some would say impossible, goal, but the right goal for all CGA members who have come to understand the potential of what can be accomplished by working together.