In the midst of a host of security issues surrounding our nation, a CNN reporter asks Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano to name her favorite food, to which she responded,”Spaghetti and meatballs."
What does this say about the state of our national security?
The U.S. is trying to cope with out-of-control borders, terrorist attacks, an economy on the skids, cyber security threats and now a huge natural gas explosion, causing extensive deaths and damage. Yet, the DHS chief and CNN have time to chitchat about food.
There is something drastically wrong with this picture.
Last week a natural gas explosion in San Bruno, California ripped through a neighborhood, killing at least seven people, injuring 20, destroying 53 homes and damaging 120 others. Curiously, the press has not treated this catastrophe with deserved attention. Instead, they are asking silly questions of Napolitano, who should be—in conjunction with the National Transportation Safety Board—tending to national protection. In this case, automated control systems for gas pipelines and cyber security.
The background of the explosion reveals a series of governmental errors that links back to the California Public Utility Commission, federal government regulators, a lackluster administration and incompetent layers of bureaucrats. Back in 2007 when the owner, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. reported a segment of the line was unsafe, regulators gave them approval for $5 million to replace a 62-year-old section of the pipeline that exploded. PG&E, however, did not replace the pipe.
Proper governance should have dictated immediate action, not delayed action.
PG&E slipped the schedule for pipe replacement, and as part of another rate hike request, asked for an additional $5 million for the same project in 2013. To date, the cause of the explosion remains unknown, but theoretically, PG&E could have avoided the San Bruno explosion if they had replaced and perhaps automated the pipeline as scheduled.
Based on their own 2007 evaluation, PG&E wrote, "If the replacement of the pipe does not occur, risks associated with this segment (located about 1.5 miles north of the segment that exploded) will not be reduced. Coupled with the consequences of failure of this section of pipeline, the likelihood of a failure makes the risk of a failure at this location unacceptably high."
Whatever the cause, this incident should not have occurred because the industry is supposedly obligated under strict safety rules. One telling point is the system was manually operated, not computerized by a much safer system. PG&E said the pipeline, built in 1956, was not equipped with automatic shut-off valves—a highly unsafe scenario.
U.S. government agencies regulate energy operations in correspondence with certain standards and industry organizations, some of which are:
1. DOT - Department of Transportation
2. DHS – Department of Homeland Security
3. PHMSA – U.S. Department of Transportation, Pipeline Hazardous Material Safety Administration
4. FERC - Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
5. NERC - North American Electric Reliability Corporation
6. AGA – American Gas Association
7. NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology
8. API - American Petroleum Institute,
9. ISO – International Standards Organization
Now, in the wake of the gas explosion disaster, the Obama administration is calling for "tougher oversight" of oil and gas pipelines. The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said the federal agency responsible for the regulation is “too accepting of assurances from industry that its equipment and practices are safe.”
The pipeline administration is the latest agency that lawmakers and safety advocates say,
". . . have become so close to an industry it regulates that it has lost sight of the safety mission."
Remember the BP Gulf oil spill?
All too often, this top-heavy administration’s “Management by Reaction” method seems to be the norm and the Department of Transportation / Department of Homeland Security is no exception. Oil and gas pipelines should be programmable to detect gas leaks, maximum / minimum allowable operating parameters, automatic shut-off valves, etc. It is somewhat surprising that major pipelines are still manual.
Obviously, big government bureaucracy has too much inertia, unable to act when and where necessary before a disaster happens.
Then again, maybe they are too busy eating “spaghetti and meatballs.”
Semper Fi,
Lou@Gallio.net
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