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On April 27, APGA’s Vice President of Operations, John Erickson, spoke to state pipeline safety regulators at the Southern Region meeting of the National Association of Pipeline Safety Representatives (NAPSR) in Biloxi, Miss. NAPSR is the association of state pipeline safety regulators. In one of his first slides, John displayed a map of public natural gas systems across the U.S., which showed that more than half were located in NAPSR’s Southern Region. He described the challenge that APGA faces to ensure that the regulation writers in Washington, D.C., understand that the majority of the entities that will be affected by federal regulations are not the large investor-owned utilities (IOU) but rather public natural gas systems. The administrative burdens imposed by regulations fall harder on systems that have fewer employees and resources than the large IOUs, however safety is paramount as public gas systems are truly local distribution systems and the piping they construct, inspect and maintain is located in the cities and towns where they live and work.

John cited the APGA System Operational Achievement Recognition (SOAR) program as one example of commitment to safety. SOAR challenges operators to strive for excellence in the four areas of system integrity, system improvement, employee safety and workforce development. The criteria to earn SOAR go beyond compliance with regulations and require operators to go further.

For APGA Security and Integrity Foundation programs, John focused on recent changes to the Simple, Handy, Risk-based Integrity Management Plan (SHRIMP) program, such as the ability for SHRIMP users to compare their leak and excavation damage rates with that of other SHRIMP users. He also described how SHRIMP now allows users to track performance measures within SHRIMP and use SHRIMP’s built in statistical tools to determine if measures are showing improvement.

For questions on this article, please contact John Erickson of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-2742 or by email at jerickson@apga.org.