Pipeline Companies Use Expired Materials to Cut Costs, Flouting Regulations

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After a 2010 pipeline explosion and fire in San Bruno, California, killed eight people, injured more than 60 and destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes, DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) began a review of pipeline regulations, which lasted for more than a decade. In August 2022, PHMSA finalized new rules that take effect in May 2023. Nowhere in those new rules has PHMSA addressed a serious pipe-coating problem that experts have known about for years and that’s been the subject of great reporting, as pointed out by climate activist Bill McKibben.

Way back in 2004, the National Association of Pipe Coating Applicators (NAPCA) put out an eight-page bulletin which stated, at the very beginning, that FBE-coated pipe should not be stored above ground for more than six months without protection from the sun. The warning is stated again in a disclaimer at the very end of the bulletin.

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As clear as this article and study were about the inability of whitewash to protect FBE coating from losing its critical flexibility, they were even more damning regarding what happens to FBE coating if it never even gets whitewashed at all, which is the case with a lot of pipe that has sat out exposed to the sun for years awaiting burial. That’s true for much of the pipe for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which is designed to operate with pressures as high as 1,480 pounds per square inch (psi). The exploding pipeline in San Bruno had a maximum operating pressure of 375 psi, less than a quarter of MVP’s pressure.
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