Don Santa, president and chief executive officer of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, today commented on an interagency federal task force’s report, Ensuring Safe and Reliable Underground Natural Gas Storage, that contains 44 specific recommendations.
“INGAA is evaluating the recommendations of the interagency task force. We strongly support advancements in storage safety through a risk-based approach to storage integrity management.
“INGAA is concerned, however, that the task force finalized its recommendations prior to the completion of the root-cause analysis of the Aliso Canyon storage incident.
“We also are concerned by the task force’s recommendation that storage wells with “single barriers” be transitioned to “double barriers.” As written, this prescriptive recommendation could affect the majority of U.S. natural gas storage wells, and adversely affect customer service and reliability. Installing “double barriers” is not the only approach to improve gas storage safety.
“INGAA agrees with the federal task force’s recommendation that additional data collection and input from subject-matter experts are necessary to inform future storage regulation. We look forward to working with PHMSA and DOE to support data collection and analysis moving forward.
“We applaud the task force for acknowledging the value of the RP 1170 and 1171 consensus recommended practices developed by government, academia and industry experts.”
Download the press release here.
