Federal Pipeline Safety Regulator Extends Comment Period for Integrity Management and Class Location Inquiry
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) published a notice in today’s Federal Register extending the period for responding to its inquiry about expanding the integrity management program requirements to pipelines located outside of high consequence areas and eliminating the class location requirements for gas pipelines. As explained in our previous post, a mandate in the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011, the most recent reauthorization of the federal pipeline safety laws, requires PHMSA to evaluate these issues and provide a report to the U.S. Congress with its findings by January 2014. The new deadline for submitting comments on the original notice is November 1, 2013.