Hazardous Materials: Mandatory Regulatory Reviews To Unleash American Energy and Improve Government Efficiency

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Parts 106, 107, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179 and 180</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PHMSA-2025-0032 (HM-265B)]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2137-AF74</RIN> <SUBJECT>Hazardous Materials: Mandatory Regulatory Reviews To Unleash American Energy and Improve Government Efficiency</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> PHMSA is publishing this advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) to solicit stakeholder feedback on whether to repeal or amend any requirements in the Hazardous Materials Rulemaking Procedures and Program Procedures, or the Hazardous Materials Regulations to eliminate undue burdens on the identification, development, and use of domestic energy resources and to improve government efficiency. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on this ANPRM must be received by August 4, 2025. However, PHMSA will consider late-filed comments to the extent practicable, consistent with 49 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 106.70. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments identified by the Docket Number using any of the following ways: 1. <E T="03">E-Gov Web: https://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. 2. <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. 3. <E T="03">Hand Delivery:</E> DOT Docket Management System: West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001, between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. 4. <E T="03">Fax:</E> 202-493-2251. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Please include the docket number PHMSA-2025-0032 (HM-265B) at the beginning of your comments. 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. Internet users may submit comments at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <NOTE> <HD SOURCE="HED">Note:</HD> Comments are posted without changes or edits to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. There is a privacy statement published on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> </NOTE> <E T="03">Privacy Act Statement:</E> In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(c), DOT solicits comments from the public to inform its rulemaking process. DOT posts these comments, without edit, including any personal information the commenter provides, to <E T="03">https://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">Confidential Business Information:</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) is commercial or financial information that is both customarily and treated as private by its owner. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, 5 U.S.C. 552), CBI is exempt from public disclosure. It is important that you clearly designate the comments submitted as CBI if: your comments responsive to this document contain commercial or financial information that is customarily treated as private; you treat such information as private; and your comment is relevant or responsive to this notice. Pursuant to 49 CFR 105.30, 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, along with the original document, a second copy of the original document with the CBI deleted; and (3) explain why the information that you are submitting is CBI. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Yul B. Baker Jr., Standards and Rulemaking Division, Office of Hazardous Materials Safety, (202) 366-8553. Hard copies may be sent to 2nd Floor, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001. Any materials PHMSA receives that is not specifically designated as CBI will be placed in the public docket. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments 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 the street address listed above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Yul B. Baker Jr., Standards and Rulemaking Division, Office of Hazardous Materials Safety, (202) 366-8553, PHMSA, East Building, PHH10, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> PHMSA is publishing this advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) to solicit stakeholder feedback on whether to repeal or amend any requirements in the Rulemaking Procedures (49 CFR part 106), the Hazardous Materials Program Procedures (49 CFR part 107), or the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR; 49 CFR parts 171 through 180)—as well as any letters of interpretation, guidance documents, or other material implementing those regulations—to eliminate undue burdens on the identification, development, and use of domestic energy resources and to improve government efficiency. As part of this effort, PHMSA is seeking stakeholder feedback regarding opportunities to identify widely used hazardous material special permits with established safety records for conversion into deregulatory provisions with broader applicability. PHMSA is also seeking stakeholder feedback regarding opportunities to introduce efficiencies to its petitions process. Finally, PHMSA also solicits stakeholder feedback on whether to amend the HMR to require PHMSA to conduct periodic, mandatory regulatory reviews. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> PHMSA's HMR play an essential role in the energy supply chain by ensuring the safe, reliable, and affordable transportation of energy products to millions of Americans. Annually, more than 3.3 billion tons of hazardous materials are shipped by rail, vessel, highway, and air that include a wide range of energy commodities such as more than 88 million barrels of crude oil, three million shipments of radioactive materials (including nuclear fuel and waste products), more than 230 million barrels of ethanol shipped by rail as well as other biofuels. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The HMR also govern transportation of critical minerals, explosives used in energy production activity, chemicals used in refinery processes, waste products from energy exploration and production activity and other materials integral to the identification, development, extraction, and use of domestic energy resources. Ensuring compliance with the HMR is the responsibility of a wide range of entities, from online internet retailers to railroads, commercial trucking companies, and large oil and gas companies. The HMR impose incident reporting obligations (part 171, subpart B) and the Hazardous Materials Program Procedures impose a registration and fee requirement (part 107, subpart G) on offerors and carriers of hazardous materials. Each of the entities subject to the HMR must invest scarce resources in satisfying some combination of PHMSA registration, reporting, qualification, packaging, labeling, documentation, testing, security, and emergency response planning requirements. The costs of those investments are often passed along from suppliers of refined and unrefined energy products to other entities in the energy supply chain, to the industrial manufacturing and commercial goods sectors, and, ultimately, to the American consumer. PHMSA must ensure that the burdens imposed by the HMR on stakeholders are necessary to serve the public interest. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See, e.g.,</E> U.S. Departments of Transportation and Commerce, 2017 Economic Census: Transportation, available at <E T="03">https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/econ/ec17tcf-us.pdf;</E> U.S. Energy Information Administration, Petroleum & Other Liquids, available at <E T="03">https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/data.php#movements;</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Transportation of Radioactive Material, available at <E T="03">www.epa.gov/radtown/transportation-radioactive-material.</E> </FTNT> Conducting periodic, retrospective reviews of the HMR is one way to achieve that objective. Presidents of both political parties dating to the 1970s have called on Federal agencies by Executive order (E.O.) to conduct broad reviews of existing regulations, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> and scholars and other experts in administrative law have long touted the benefits of adhering to such a process. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The Department of Transportation (DOT) requires review of regulations on a 10-year review cycle, as specified by 11(d) of DOT Order 2011.6B, “Policies and Procedures for Rulemakings.”  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> DOT has previously issued plans and regulations requiring retrospective review  <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> and solicited stakeholder input to inform those reviews on multiple occasions and is currently taking recommendations on the DOT-wide opportunities for modification or repeal of regulations to reduce undue compliance burdens. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Congress requires periodic regulatory reviews on a l ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 36k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━