A U.S. appeals court on Friday rejected several natural gas pipeline safety standards adopted by President Joe Biden’s administration. The court responded to industry criticism about the massive costs imposed on pipeline operators.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) failed to adequately justify why the benefits of the revised standards outweighed their costs.
The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, a trade group that initially supported most of the revisions, filed a lawsuit last year to challenge five specific standards that PHMSA adopted over its objections. These highly technical standards, finalized in 2022, included new requirements for operators to repair pipeline walls thinning, corroding, or developing cracks and dents.
The trade group welcomed the court’s ruling. However, the agency did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan, writing for the three-judge panel on Friday, criticized PHMSA’s analysis of the costs associated with the new standards, describing it as inadequate, inconsistent, or missing.
“Because the agency imposed a new safety requirement without properly addressing the costs of doing so, the standard cannot stand,” Pan, a Biden appointee, said of one of the new requirements.
The court upheld a fifth new standard, which the trade group had also challenged. This standard addresses monitoring for a type of pipe anomaly that occurs when corrosion and high pressure cause cracks.
