American Petroleum Institute encouraged by new underground gas storage rules

The Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) new underground natural gas storage rule includes two recommended practices proposed by the American Petroleum Institute (API), which cover safe design, storage and operation for underground natural gas management.

“Safety is our industry’s core value and our men and women work with experts from the stakeholder community such as industry, government and academia to develop and apply the latest technologies and standards as we strive towards our goal of zero incidents,” API Midstream Group Director Robin Rorick said. “The adoption of API recommend practices in this new rule for underground natural gas storage is the latest example of how our industry works proactively and cooperatively to advance safety efforts.”

While API applauded PHMSA’s inclusion of two of its recommended practices, the organization was not entirely supportive of the new rule, which it believes bears an unachievable deadline.

“While we are encouraged that the new rule adopts API’s rigorous safety management practices, we fear that the new rule’s unrealistic compliance timeline will prevent operators from effectively implementing the requirements of the rule and could potentially undermine the very safety efforts the rule is trying to promote,” Rorick said. “While we will continue to review the impacts of this rule, we hope that PHMSA will work with our industry to ensure that the rule can be implemented in a fashion that both improves safety and ensures that clean and reliable supplies of natural gas from the U.S. energy renaissance are consistently available to the country.”