Pipeline Safety Stakeholder Communications

Current incident reports from pipeline operators include details about whether the consequences affected the public or the operator. For gas transmission, gas gathering, and hazardous liquid incident reports, these details have been available since January 2002. For gas distribution incident reports, these details have been available since March 2004.

The tables below show the consequences of Significant Incidents (A) and their respective impact on the public and industry.

The data source for this table is the PHMSA Filtered Incident Files (1) (2) (3)

Where appropriate, the table columns can be sorted by clicking the corresponding column header.

More Pipeline Incidents and Mileage Reports are available.

Notes

1. Significant Incidents are those incidents reported by pipeline operators when any of the following conditions are met: 1) Fatality or injury requiring in-patient hospitalization. 2) $50,000 or more in total costs, measured in 1984 dollars. 3) Highly volatile liquid releases of 5 barrels or more or other liquid releases of 50 barrels or more. 4) Liquid releases resulting in an unintentional fire or explosion. Serious incidents, a subset of Significant Incidents, are incidents which involve a fatality or injury requiring in-patient hospitalization.
2. Gas Distribution incidents where fire/explosion was the primary cause of failure, such as a house fire that subsequently resulted in - but was not caused by - a distribution line failure are excluded from 2004 onward. This exclusion has not been applied in years prior to 2004 due to difficulty in identifying these types of events with the older report formats.
3. The costs for incidents prior to 2011 are presented in 2011 dollars. Cost of Gas lost is indexed via the Energy Information Administration, Natural Gas City Gate Prices. All other costs are adjusted via the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Government Printing Office inflation values.
4. For years 2002 and later, property damage is estimated as the sum of all public and private costs reported in the 30-day incident report. For years prior to 2002, accident report forms did not include a breakdown of public and private costs so property damage for these years is the reported total property damage field in the report.
5. The public cost of an incident is defined as public and private (non operator) costs for the incident.
6. Prior to 2010, Emergency Response & Remediation costs were not required to be reported for Gas Transmission & Gathering or Gas Distribution incidents.
7. The industry cost of an incident is defined as all costs to the operator and its contractors.

Sources

1. PHMSA Hazardous Liquid Flagged Incidents File - April 30, 2012. Note: Incidents occurring up to 30 days prior the Incident File source date may not appear in these reports due to the 30-day reporting period allowed by PHMSA regulation.
2. PHMSA Gas Transmission Flagged Incidents File - April 30, 2012. Note: Incidents occurring up to 30 days prior the Incident File source date may not appear in these reports due to the 30-day reporting period allowed by PHMSA regulation.
3. PHMSA Gas Distribution Flagged Incidents File - April 30, 2012 . Note: Incidents occurring up to 30 days prior the Incident File source date may not appear in these reports due to the 30-day reporting period allowed by PHMSA regulation.

See Pipeline Incidents and Mileage Reports for more pipeline safety reports.