PEER - Federal Pipeline Agency Staff Attended 850 Industry Conferences, But Only 159 Of 300+ Spills

Between 2007 and 2012, staff from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration spent 2,807 days at conferences, meetings and other events sponsored by the oil, gas and pipeline industries, according to the report from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). That's nearly three times as many as the 970 days the staffers spent responding to spills, explosions and other significant incidents on the pipelines they regulate. PEER drew the figures from agency records received in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

According to records that PEER provided to The Huffington Post, the pipeline agency spent $245,938 on travel to industry meetings and events sponsored by groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the American Gas Association in those six years. But it spent only $171,801 responding to significant spills, explosions and breakdowns on pipelines that transport oil, gas and other hazardous materials during the same period.

PEER also found that agency representatives attended 850 meetings and other events with industry in that period, but staffers were sent to investigate only 159 significant spills, explosions and breakdowns. A previous release from the watchdog group, also based on FOIA information received from the agency, found there have been more than 300 spills, explosions and other incidents since 2006 that the agency did not dispatch inspectors to investigate. PEER found that since 2006, the federal agency and its state partners had inspected less than one-fifth of the 2.6 million miles of pipeline.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration responded that PEER's figures "are incomplete" because they only include travel time for investigations. On more complex investigations, agency engineers and technical specialists "spend many weeks analyzing data and determining how company actions contributed to an incident," the agency said. It also said that the figures don't include time that staffers spend in the field doing other regulatory and oversight activities, nor do they include the time that state inspectors, whose work the agency funds, spend on investigations.

EDIT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/22/pipeline-safety_n_4144913.html?utm_hp_ref=politics