PHMSA Pipeline Incident Statistics

Ever wonder how pipeline incidents and accidents have trended over time? Check out PHMSA’s new incident trend website at http://www.phmsa.dot.gov/pipeline/library/datastatistics/pipelineincidenttrends.

PHMSA has collected pipeline incident reports since 1970. Although the report formats have changed in that time frame, the report data have been merged and scrubbed to generate 20 year trend graphs.

The trend data can be filtered by state and by system type (gas distribution, gas transmission, gas gathering, hazardous liquid or liquefied natural gas). Data are available for all incidents, for “serious incidents” or those which include a fatality or injury requiring hospitalization, and for “significant incidents” or those which had $50,000 or more in total costs, measured in 1984 dollars. Significant hazardous liquid incidents also include highly volatile liquid (HVL) releases of 5 barrels or more, non-HVL liquid releases of 50 barrels or more, or an unintentional fire or explosion.

You can also download a ZIP file of all reports submitted by operators or a ZIP file of “flagged incidents” which includes the data used to generate the trend data.