On March 20, 2001, RSPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking in the federal register (66 FR 15681) to lower the existing threshold for accident reporting for operators of hazardous liquid pipeline systems subject to RSPA regulations under Part 195. The existing threshold of 50 barrels would be lowered to the new threshold of 5 gallons. The reporting burden for small spills would be minimized by collecting only minimal information for spills from 5 gallons to less than 5 barrels, except where a spill of 5 gallons or more occurs in water. Spills between 5 gallons and less than 5 barrels that occur during normal maintenance activities are exempt if they are confined to the operator's property or pipeline right-of-way and they are cleaned up without delay. A spill of 5 or more barrels, or any accident reportable by the already existing criteria specified in section 195.50 will, as at present, require complete reporting. Comments on the subject of this proposed rule must be received on or before May 21, 2001 (docket number RSPA-01-8663).

The hazardous liquid accident form will also be revised to improve its usefulness. On the revised accident form, reporting for spills from less than 5 barrels down to 5 gallons will require reporting minimal information, whereas any spill in water of 5 gallons or more, any spill of 5 barrels or more, or where otherwise reportable according to existing reporting criteria as outlined in 49 CFR 195.50, will require completion of the entire new proposed accident report. Additionally, RSPA proposes to further improve the usefulness of the information collected on the hazardous liquid accident form RSPA F 7000-1 by strengthening the cause and consequence detail information on the accident report. The proposed new reporting form and instructions can be downloaded from RCP's website here (FORM)(INSTRUCTIONS).

RSPA acknowledges the need for consistent pipeline information for both natural gas and hazardous liquid pipeline accidents. Plans are currently underway to similarly revise natural gas transmission incident pipeline information. RSPA also plans to adopt a similar failure cause scheme for natural gas distribution pipeline incidents later in 2001. By adopting recognized industry proposed failure causal categories for natural gas and hazardous liquid pipeline incidents, RSPA is taking a step toward further standardization of pipeline safety statistics for all pipeline types, increasing the overall usefulness of the data, and making analysis more efficient and meaningful.