Several changes to the required incident forms for Gas Distribution, Transmission, and LNG unintentional releases will occur shortly. This article focuses on the Gas Transmission and Gathering incident form changes, though these changes will appear in each incident report. The changes include:
- Question and answer choices focusing on the chronological event log and operator actions.
- Selections for the item involved in the failure has also been updated to limit the number of “other” selections.
- Injuries that do NOT require overnight hospitalization, such as visits to a hospital for treatment or treatment onsite by Emergency Medical personnel will now be recorded.
- In addition to the cost of public private property damages, the number of buildings affected, residential and business, will also be recorded.
- Third party damages will now include a question about One-Call State law exemptions contributing to the event; and for outside force events caused by vehicles not engaged in excavation, several questions have been able to help describe the driver and circumstances of the accident.
There are two new sections, Part J and Part K. Part J combines and adds to the available list of In-line inspection tools that can be selected for integrity assessments. PHMSA will also require the most current inspection tool, what it was attuned to detect, and the previous inspection year for the same tool type. More up-to-date direct inspections choices, such as Stress Corrosion Cracking Direct Assessment (SCCDA), will also be included in Part J.
Part K considers contributing factors to an incident. Operators will select the root cause from the usual causes and then in Part K, can select any other cause or sub-cause(s) that were present and identified at the time of the failure and its subsequent investigation. Each contributing factor should be described briefly in Part H in the narrative of events.
These form changes will take place in the next month. Changes mirroring those for the Gas Transmission & Gathering Incident report form will likely occur to the Hazardous Liquids Accident report form soon as well.