Pipeline Safety: Cost Recovery for Siting Reviews for LNG Facilities

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 190</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PHMSA-2022-0118]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2137-AF61</RIN> <SUBJECT>Pipeline Safety: Cost Recovery for Siting Reviews for LNG Facilities</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> PHMSA is proposing a new fee for cost recovery for siting reviews of liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility project applications where the design and construction costs total $2.5 billion or more. This proposed rule is necessary to implement section 103 of the Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act of 2020 (PIPES Act of 2020), and to help provide adequate resources for siting reviews to promote the public safety and environmental protection objectives of the Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS). This proposed rule also revises current regulations authorizing PHMSA's cost recovery for design safety reviews of gas, hazardous liquid, and carbon dioxide pipeline facilities to improve the clarity of the regulations and reduce unnecessary administrative burdens. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Individuals interested in submitting written comments on this NPRM must do so by October 18, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments should reference Docket No. PHMSA-2022-0118 and may be submitted in any of the following ways: • <E T="03">E-Gov Web: http://www.regulations.gov.</E> This site allows the public to enter comments on any <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice issued by any agency. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management System: U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery:</E> DOT Docket Management System: West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday, except federal holidays. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> 202-493-2251. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Include the agency name and identify Docket No. PHMSA-2022-0118 at the beginning of your comments. Note that all comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> including any personal information provided. If you submit your comments by mail, submit two copies. If you wish to receive confirmation that PHMSA received your comments, include a self-addressed stamped postcard. <E T="03">Confidential Business Information:</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) is commercial or financial information that is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner. Under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552), CBI is exempt from public disclosure. If your comments in response to this NPRM contain commercial or financial information that is customarily treated as private, that you actually treat as private, and that is relevant or responsive to this NPRM, it is important that you clearly designate the submitted comments as CBI. Pursuant to 49 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 190.343, you may ask PHMSA to provide confidential treatment to the information you give to the agency by taking the following steps: (1) mark each page of the original document submission containing CBI as “Confidential;” (2) send PHMSA a copy of the original document with the CBI deleted along with the original, unaltered document; and (3) explain why the information you are submitting is CBI. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Alyssa Imam, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, DOT: PHMSA-PHP-30, Washington, DC 20590-0001. Any comment PHMSA receives that is not explicitly designated as CBI will be placed in the public docket. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Privacy Act Statement</HD> In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(c), DOT solicits comments from the public to better inform its rulemaking process. DOT posts these comments, without edit, including any personal information the commenter provides, to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice (DOT/ALL-14 FDMS), which can be reviewed at <E T="03">www.dot.gov/privacy.</E> <E T="03">Docket:</E> To access the docket, which contains background documents and any comments that PHMSA has received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for accessing the docket. Alternatively, you may review the documents in person at DOT's Docket Management Office at the address listed above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Alyssa Imam by telephone at 202-738-4203 or via email at <E T="03">alyssa.imam@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background and Justification</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Proposed Amendments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Section-by-Section Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Regulatory Analyses and Notices</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Summary</HD> This proposed rulemaking would implement a mandate in the PIPES Act of 2020 (Pub. L. 116-260, Division R) to amend the pipeline safety regulations (49 CFR parts 190-199) to prescribe a fee assessment methodology for PHMSA to recover its costs in performing 49 CFR part 193, subpart B, siting reviews of applications for new or expanded LNG facilities with project design and construction costs totaling $2.5 billion or more. PHMSA expects that the cost recovery mechanisms proposed in this NPRM will help ensure that PHMSA maintains adequate resources to perform those siting reviews without diverting its limited resources from other critical dimensions of its regulatory oversight of jurisdictional gas (including LNG), hazardous liquid, and carbon dioxide pipeline facilities, while ensuring the costs associated with the review are borne by the project applicant rather than by all pipeline operators through the expenditure of operator user fees. The proposed rule would also revise current regulations authorizing PHMSA's cost recovery for design safety reviews of gas, hazardous liquid, and carbon dioxide pipeline facilities to improve the clarity of the regulations and reduce unnecessary administrative burdens. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background and Justification</HD> PHMSA conducts both a facility design safety review and siting review of LNG facilities under part 193. PHMSA conducts facility design safety reviews in connection with applications to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) or state regulators (as applicable) to construct, expand, or operate gas (including LNG) and hazardous liquid (as well as carbon dioxide  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> ) pipeline facilities; those reviews include reviews of application materials and inspections verifying construction in accordance with the application and pipeline safety regulations. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  PHMSA in a parallel rulemaking (under RIN2137-AF64) will consider expanding the carbon dioxide pipelines subject to PHMSA regulation—and by extension, the pipelines subject to cost recovery under part 190 for PHMSA's design safety reviews. </FTNT> Prior to the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 (2011 Act, Pub. L. 112-90), PHMSA did not recover costs incurred for conducting facility design safety reviews for LNG facilities or any other pipelines. Section 13 of the 2011 Act, 49 U.S.C. 60117(o), authorized PHMSA to recover costs for facility design safety reviews if the project application either involved design and construction costs totaling at least $2.5 billion, or involved new or novel technologies, designs (such as LNG facilities, whose design, construction, and employed technology will often materially change from one project to the next), or new materials. While the 2011 Act allowed PHMSA to recover fees for its costs incurred in performing facility design safety reviews, the 2011 Act did not allow PHMSA to expend any collected fees absent specific appropriation by Congress. In 2017, PHMSA exercised the authority granted in section 13(a) of the 2011 Act by prescribing a fee structure and assessment methodology based on the costs of providing design safety reviews of applications for gas (including LNG) or hazardous liquid (including carbon dioxide) pipeline facilities. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> In that final rule, PHMSA amended the pipeline safety regulations at part 190, subpart E, to prescribe a fee structure and assessment methodology for recovering costs associated with design safety reviews of applications for new projects for gas, hazardous liquid, LNG, and carbon dioxide pipeline facilities (each with design and construction costs totaling at least $2.5 billion, or that contain new and novel technologies). <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  PHMSA, “Final Rule—Pipeline Safety: Operator Qualification, Cost Recovery, Accident and Incident Notification, and Other Pipeline Safety Changes,” 82 FR 7972 (Jan. 23, 2017). </FTNT> PHMSA is also responsible for the review of LNG facility siting; that review is an input to FERC's evaluation of applications for authorization to construct and operate a new LNG facility (or an expansion of an existing LNG facility). During the LNG facility siting review, PHMSA assesses the siting packages prepared by the applicants for new or expanded LNG facility projects for compliance with siting regulations at part 193, subpart B. PHMSA had historically not been authorized by statute to assess fees recovering its costs associated with those reviews. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> However, in section ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 114k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━