Will the Mountain Valley Pipeline Safety Order Have Teeth, and Does Biden Care?

President Joe Biden has been busy lately in Hawaii and Florida dealing with after-the-fact disasters linked to fossil fuels, but there’s a fossil fuel disaster-in-waiting that he also needs to pay attention to and so far he hasn’t. Two thirds of the way through his term, he still has not bothered to nominate an administrator to lead the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA.

This is a big problem because the builders of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) are currently burying defective, unsafe, and illegal pipe as fast as they can, which should be of particular interest to the president because when he signed the Dirty Debt Deal, MVP effectively became his pipeline. From a climate perspective MVP is, as Bill McKibben politely called it, dunderheaded. But if it’s going to get built, Biden has a personal responsibility to at least make sure it gets built safely. Right now that is not happening.

In August, PHMSA sent MVP a Notice of Proposed Safety Order (NOPSO) regarding safety problems the agency had identified. The details of the NOPSO are being worked out in consultation with MVP. No doubt pressure is being applied on PHMSA by MVP, the industry in general, and politicians like Joe Manchin to water down any safety measures that might cause a delay in getting MVP built. Whether or not career officials at PHMSA will cave under that pressure we do not yet know. But there is a lot we do know, and our knowledge will make any sort of half-baked safety order unacceptable.

Unless and until MVP can produce some legitimate test results that show otherwise, everyone should assume that MVP’s pipe coating is no different than the KXL pipe coating, meaning that it is “no longer fit for purpose.”

We know that the manufacturer of the corrosion proof epoxy coating on MVP pipes and the National Association of Pipe Coating Applicators say that the coating should not be exposed to the sun for more than six months. Even a senior MVP vice president, testifying in court *68 months ago* during an eminent domain hearing, said that they needed to quickly get the pipe in the ground so that the sun wouldn’t deteriorate the coating.

We know that MVP pipe was coated six to seven years ago and most of it was exposed to the sun for years afterward, including all of the pipe that is currently being buried.

We know that a five-decade old federal law says that all pipelines must have an external coating that protects against corrosion. Even MVP lawyer Donald Verrilli said that the debt deal doesn’t negate the requirement to comply with that law. Federal law also says that the external coating must meet certain standards, including being “sufficiently ductile to resist cracking.” Ductile means flexible.

In the January 2020 issue of Corrosion Management (p. 16) there was an article about a study done on the external coating applied to pipe intended for the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, which had sat out in the sun for years just as MVP pipe has. The pipe for both pipelines was manufactured and coated by the same company, Welspun.

In describing the condition of the KXL pipe coating after such prolonged exposure to the sun, the study used phrases such as “no longer acceptable,” “total failures,” “completely failed to retain their original properties and attributes,” and “no longer fit for purpose.”

On page 19 the article stated that KXL pipe coating demonstrated a “serious deterioration in its flexibility performance.” It said the flexibility tests were “deemed failures,” and that the flexibility had deteriorated “to the point where the coating was no longer acceptable.” All the flexibility tests resulted in “cracking within the coating.” Once cracking within the coating occurs, it creates a pathway to the steel pipe that water will surely find, allowing the corrosion process to begin.

Unless and until MVP can produce some legitimate test results that show otherwise, everyone should assume that MVP’s pipe coating is no different than the KXL pipe coating, meaning that it is “no longer fit for purpose.”

We take the sun for granted and often forget how powerful it is. On the plus side it has the potential to save us from runaway climate change if we quickly turn to it as an alternative to burning fossil fuels. On the other hand it can also be extremely destructive. Remember the news story about the trucker who had been on the road for 28 years? The picture of his face said it all. And now we learn that Jimmy Buffett, whose music was often about fun in the sun, has died way too soon from skin cancer.

We need, and Joe Biden needs, to take this pipe coating issue very seriously. This is a massive 42-inch diameter pipeline that will operate at extremely high pressure. Its blast zone includes schools and people’s homes. No one should take MVP’s word for it that the pipe is safe and they have the situation under control. MVP has been fined millions of dollars for hundreds of violations that have occurred so far during construction. The company building MVP was responsible for last year’s biggest climate disaster, a methane leak that they couldn’t stop for 13 days. It was caused by corrosion, and it alone wiped out the climate gains from half of President Biden’s highly touted electric vehicle sales last year.

MVP may pretend it can remedy the coating problem on site, but we’re aware of how coating is properly applied. It’s a fairly elaborate process that can only be done back at the factory (see the two minute video). Even a KXL pipeline manager said fixing defective coating couldn’t be done in the field and that it required shipping the pipe back to the plant for stripping, cleaning, and recoating.

If Donald Trump was still President, PHMSA’s safety order would probably never have even seen the light of day. But if the safety order that gets finalized on Joe Biden’s watch ends up being toothless, then the end result will amount to a distinction without a difference. The ball is in President Biden’s and PHMSA’s court.