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Pipeline Safety Facts

The United States Department of Transportation operates the Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration or PHMSA. Whenever there is a problem with a pipeline or a pipeline facility, pipeline operators submit reports to the PHMSA and the PHMSA prepares summary reports and files. Those files are all available at the PHMSA web site.

One recent use of the PHMSA data is to graphically show where the incidents are occurring. Several such depictions have appeared recently. ProPublica published an interactive map. The Center for Biological Diversity published a video chronologically showing the locations of pipeline incidents from 1986 to July 2013. In that video there are a total of 7978 incidents with 512 deaths and 2360 injuries. The Center also provides several graphs derived from the PHMSA data.The incidents shown in these presentations are only ″Significant″ incidents, a term which PHMSA defines.

In addition to these visual representations of the PHMSA data, a recent analysis of PHMSA pipeline safety claims has appeared. This review of PHMSA safety claims indicates that pipeline safety has not improved in the US since about 2001 and that pipeline facilities 30 years old or older may be significantly more likely to have problems than newer pipeline facilities. This may have significant relevance to the Mayflower oil spill.