Pipeline Safety: 2024 Risk Modeling Public Workshop

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PHMSA-2024-0043]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Pipeline Safety: 2024 Risk Modeling Public Workshop</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This notice provides amendments to the time, website information, dates, and other details of a notice published July 25, 2024, announcing a public workshop on risk modeling methodologies and tools for the evaluation of gas, carbon dioxide (CO <E T="52">2</E> ), and hazardous liquid pipelines. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The public workshop will be held on October 23 and 24, 2024, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST (8 a.m.—5 p.m. CST). Public comments for consideration at the workshop must be submitted to Docket No. PHMSA-2024-0043 by October 11, 2024. Anyone who would like to attend the public workshop must register by October 11, 2024. Individuals requiring accommodations, such as sign language interpretation or other ancillary aids, should notify Janice Morgan by phone at 202-815-4507 or by email to <E T="03">Janice.Morgan@dot.gov</E> no later than October 1, 2024. For additional information, see the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this notice. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The 2024 Risk Modeling Public Workshop will be held in person in Houston, Texas at the Whitehall Houston Hotel, 1700 Smith Street, Houston, TX 77002. The instructions and final agenda will be posted to Docket No. PHMSA-2024-0043 once they are finalized. The link to the meeting registration is: <E T="03">https://primis-meetings.phmsa.dot.gov/meetings/4c97d810-9c86-4299-9c01-73c27f08fc07.</E> <E T="03">Presentations:</E> Presentations will be available on the meeting website and on the <E T="03">E-gov</E> website at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> Docket No. PHMSA-2024-0043, no later than 30 days following the workshop. <E T="03">Submitting comments:</E> Members of the public may submit written comments either before or after the workshop. Comments should reference Docket No. PHMSA-2024-0043 and may be submitted by any of the following ways: • <E T="03">E-Gov Web: 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 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> 202-493-2251. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Identify the docket number at the beginning of your comments. If you submit your comments by mail, please submit two copies. To receive confirmation that PHMSA has received your comments, please include a self-addressed stamped postcard. Internet users may submit comments at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <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 notice 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 notice, 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 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 Janice Morgan, DOT, PHMSA-PHP-4,1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001 or emailed to <E T="03">Janice.Morgan@dot.gov.</E> Any commentary PHMSA receives that is not specifically designated as CBI will be placed in the public docket. <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> DOT may solicit comments from the public regarding certain general notices. Comments, including any personal information provided, are posted without changes or edits to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> DOT posts these comments 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> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for accessing the dockets. Alternatively, you may review the documents in person at the DOT Docket Management street address listed above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Lee Cooper, Engineering Operations Supervisor, Engineering and Research Division, by phone at 202-913-3171 or by email at <E T="03">Lee.Cooper@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This notice provides amendments to details of a notice published July 25, 2024 (89 FR 60489). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Pipeline risk models are foundational to the assessment of operational pipeline risk. Federal pipeline safety integrity management (IM) regulations require pipeline operators to use risk assessments. PHMSA's integrity management regulations (49 CFR part 192, subparts O and P; 49 CFR 195.452) require the continual evaluation of threats to pipelines, methods to minimize the likelihood of a release, and the consequences of potential releases. Risk models are a primary tool pipeline operators use as part of this evaluation process and are generally referred to as a “risk analysis” or “risk assessment.” A risk model is a set of algorithms or rules that use available information and data relationships to perform a risk assessment. The risk model is a simplified representation of a pipeline system and represents the relation of important risk factors. To meet integrity management standards, a risk modeling approach must be able to adequately characterize all pipeline integrity threats and consequences concurrently, as well as be able to evaluate the impact of various measures on reducing risk. In September 2015, PHMSA hosted a public workshop on risk modeling where various comments were presented and discussed with interested stakeholders. Information regarding the previous public workshop can be found at Docket No. PHMSA-2015-0139. Following the public workshop, PHMSA organized a risk modeling work group to gather information regarding state-of-the-art pipeline risk modeling methods and tools, the use of those methods and tools, and the resulting data in operator IM programs. In February 2020, PHMSA issued the resulting report, “Pipeline Risk Modeling, Overview of Methods and Tools for Improved Implementation,” which presented several conclusions: • The overriding principle in employing any type of risk model/assessment is that it supports risk management decisions to reduce risks. • While different risk model types have different capabilities for evaluating risk reduction actions, the quantitative system model or probabilistic models are more versatile and provide greater capabilities to provide risk insights and support decision making. Such models are not necessarily more complex nor need more data compared to other types of risk models. • Pipeline operators should take ongoing actions to improve and update data quality and completeness over time. However, the type of risk model to employ in pipeline risk analyses should not depend primarily on the perceived initial quality and completeness of input data because all models utilize the available data. Instead, operators should select the best model approach and then populate the model with the best information currently available on risk factors or threats for each pipeline segment and improve that data over time. • It is important for risk models to include modeling of incorrect operations, which includes human interactions and human performance, that are significant to the likelihood of failure or have a significant effect on consequences of a failure ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> inappropriate controller restart of pumps, realistic emergency response time scenarios, design, and construction human errors, etc.). • It is important for pipeline risk models to include the potential effects of how threats interact in ways that can increase risk. Therefore, when a risk analysis involves multiple threats, the effects of “interactive threats” or dependencies on likelihood of failure should be clearly evaluated. • Varying levels of sophistication are possible in the analysis of the consequences of a failure. However, it is important to consider an applicable range of scenarios (even if they do not have a high probability of occurrence) to capture the full spectrum of possible consequences. • The characteristics of pipeline facilities that affect risk may be significantly different than those of line pipe, but the same basic risk assessment principles and types of models may be applied. In addition, section 119 of the Protecting Our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 15k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━