Prioritizing Regulatory Policy in Pipeline Safety

This paper presents a regulatory priority model and its operationalization for pipeline safety. It begins with a brief discussion of pipeline systems and regulatory legislation associated with pipeline safety. The systems transport natural gas, liquid crude oil, gasoline and other liquid hazardous petroleum products. The regulations relate to technologies to be used, human factors, research requirements and environmental protection considerations. The legislative focus is on public safety, property damage and, most recently, environmental protection. Using a risk assessment approach to operationalize the model requires integration of concepts from engineering, economics and ecology. The specific measures applied include reliability, vulnerability and resiliency. Congressional, private industry and Department of Transportation (DOT) regulatory priorities are compared. The paper concludes with the risk assessment implementation strategy by the DOT Office of Pipeline Safety.