The Department of Transportation’s Office of Pipeline Safety
which regulates the flow of hazardous liquids such as natural
gas, cannot determine if recent changes to its strategy are
successful because the agency has not set goals, fully
defined its strategy or established performance measures
linked to goals that would allow an assessment of results,
the Government Accountability Office has said.
It said a natural gas pipeline ruptured near Carlsbad, New
Mexico, in 2000, killed 12 people, and resulted in $1 million
in damages and losses.
OPS believes efforts such as its new risk-based regulatory
approach will change the safety culture of the industry and
that it intends to devote more attention to strengthening
the management of its enforcement program, said GAO.
It said that although OPS is developing an enforcement policy
to help define its enforcement strategy and has started
identifying performance measures, the policy will not be
ready until sometime during 2005.
Further, OPS lacks a systematic approach for incorporating
key practices identified for achieving successful
performance measurement systems, said GAO.
OPS has increased the number and the size of penalties against
pipeline operators over the last four years after deciding to
be “tough but fair,” assessing an average of 22 per year
compared to 14 in previous years and hiking the fine from
$18,000 to $29,000 on average — but it is unclear if the
increases will deter noncompliance, according to GAO-04-801.
It said some stakeholders believe the increases have a deterrent
effect by keeping pipeline operators in the public eye while
others said the penalties were too small as sanctions. Still,
fewer than half of the 216 penalties levied from 1994 to 2003
have been collected, which GAO says is partly because OPS
lacks effective management controls and because it does not
routinely inform its collection agent of penalties it has
assessed.
