Pipeline Safety: Periodic Standards Update II

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Parts 191, 192, and 195</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PHMSA-2020-0013; Amdt. Nos. 191-37, 192-156, 195-117]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2137-AF48</RIN> <SUBJECT>Pipeline Safety: Periodic Standards Update II</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> PHMSA is amending the Federal pipeline safety regulations to incorporate by reference all or parts of 19 updated industry standards. PHMSA is also clarifying certain regulatory provisions and making several editorial corrections. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The effective date of this final rule is January 10, 2026. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in the rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of January 10, 2026. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">Technical Information:</E> Rod Seeley by phone at 281-513-1741 or by email at <E T="03">Rodrick.M.Seeley@dot.gov</E> . <E T="03">Regulatory Information:</E> Brianna Wilson by phone at 771-215-0969 or by email at <E T="03">Brianna.Wilson@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Pipeline Advisory Committee Meetings</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Summary of Comments, GPAC/LPAC Discussion, and PHMSA Response</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Summary of Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Regulatory Analyses and Notices</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose of This Rule</HD> This final rule incorporates by reference 19 updated voluntary, consensus industry technical standards within the pipeline safety regulations (PSR, 49 Code of Federal Regulation (CFR) parts 190-199). The incorporation of these updated standards will maintain or improve public safety, prevent regulatory confusion, and reduce compliance burdens consistent with the requirements in the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA) of 1995 (15 United States Code (U.S.C.) 272 (note)). PHMSA incorporates more than 80 industry standards by reference into the PSRs. By updating these references on a periodic basis, PHMSA encourages innovation and technological development and reduces unnecessary compliance burdens. PHMSA has determined that the updated standards adopted in this final rule will either maintain or enhance the protection of public safety. PHMSA has further concluded that the adoption of these standards is technically feasible, reasonable, cost-effective, and practicable, and that it produces benefits that justify any associated compliance costs. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. History of Incorporation by Reference</HD> The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sets the policy for Federal use and development of voluntary, consensus industry technical standards in OMB Circular A-119 (“Federal Participation in the Development and Use of Voluntary Consensus Standards and in Conformity Assessment Activities”). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Material that is incorporated by reference (IBR) is treated as if it is published in full in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and the PSRs. Therefore, like any other rule issued in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> <E T="03">,</E> a voluntary, consensus industry technical standard that has been incorporated by reference has the full force and effect of the law. As specified in 1 CFR 51.1(c), the Director of the Federal Register has the authority to determine whether material that is proposed for IBR serves the public interest. If a provision of an incorporated standard conflicts with a regulation, the regulation takes precedence unless the regulation expressly provides otherwise. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  OMB, Circular No. A-119 (Feb. 10, 1998), available at: <E T="03">https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Circular-119-1.pdf.</E> </FTNT> PHMSA has incorporated more than 80 industry standards by reference into the PSRs. The lists of publications incorporated into parts 191 (which regulates reporting), 192 (which regulates the transportation of gas by pipeline) and 195 (which regulates the transportation of hazardous liquids and carbon dioxide by pipeline) are found in §§ 192.7 and 195.3, respectively. Previous rules that incorporated updated industry standards by reference were published on May 24, 1996 (61 FR 26121); February 17, 1998 (63 FR 7721); June 14, 2004 (69 FR 32886); June 9, 2006 (71 FR 33402); February 1, 2007 (72 FR 4655 (correction)); August 11, 2010 (75 FR 48593); January 5, 2015 (80 FR 168); August 6, 2015 (80 FR 46847 (correction)), and April 29, 2024 (89 FR 33264). The industry standards that are incorporated within the PSRs are developed or adopted by domestic and international standard-development organizations (SDOs). Approximately every two to five years, these organizations use agreed-upon procedures to update and revise their published standards to reflect the latest developments in technology, testing, and operational practices. New or updated industry standards often incorporate new technologies, materials, management practices, and other innovations that can improve the physical integrity, and the safe operation of pipeline facilities. PHMSA employees participate in meetings held by 25 domestic SDOs that address the design, construction, maintenance, inspection, operation, and repair of pipeline facilities. PHMSA's subject-matter experts represent PHMSA in all dealings with the SDOs; participate in discussions and technical debates; register opinions; and vote in accordance with the procedures of the SDOs at each stage of the standards-development process (unless prohibited from doing so by law). PHMSA participates in this process to ensure its safety priorities are considered, and to avoid the need to develop separate, government-unique standards. PHMSA also regularly reviews updated editions of currently referenced industry standards and amends the PSR to incorporate partially or fully updated standards. These updates ensure that the PSRs incorporate and facilitate the use of the latest technologies, materials, management and operational practices, testing, and other innovations. The adoption of more recent editions of industry standards also prevents conflicts between the standards referenced in the PSRs and updated versions of the same standards with which operators and suppliers may voluntarily comply, thereby (1) avoiding the confusion and expense associated with ensuring compliance with competing versions of the same standard; and (2) improving compliance and allowing the allocation of more operator resources toward safety. PHMSA reviewed the updated standards discussed in this final rule and finds them appropriate for IBR within the PSR. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Availability of Materials to Interested Parties</HD> Pursuant to section 24 of the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 (Pub. L. 112-90, 49 U.S.C. 60102(p), as amended), “the Secretary may not issue a regulation pursuant to this chapter that incorporates any documents or portions thereof unless the documents or portions thereof are made available to the public, free of charge.” Most of the updated standards incorporated by reference in this final rule can be viewed online for free. The standards incorporated by reference in this final rule are reasonably available to interested parties in several ways. First, PHMSA has negotiated agreements to make viewable copies of the standards available to the public at no cost with all but two of the SDOs whose updated standards are incorporated by reference in this final rule. The organizations that agreed to the public access requirements of the statutory mandate discussed above are: the American Petroleum Institute (API), the American Gas Association (AGA), ASTM International (formerly the American Society for Testing and Materials), the Gas Technology Institute (GTI), the Manufacturers Standardization Society of the Valve and Fittings Industry, Inc. (MSS), the Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP) (formerly NACE International), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and the Plastics Pipe Institute (PPI). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The standards can be accessed through the websites listed below. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  ASTM updates some of its more widely used standards every year, and sometimes SDOs publish multiple editions of a standard in a given year. NACE International and the Society for Protective Coatings merged to form AMPP, which is why NACE standards are listed under AMPP. </FTNT> The API standards identified in Section V.A. are available from the following website: <E T="03">https://publications.api.org/IBR-Documents-Under-Consideration.aspx.</E> The ASTM standards identified in Section V.E. are available from the following website: <E T="03">https://www.astm.org/products-services/reading-room.html.</E> The AMPP: NACE standards identified in Section V.D. are available from the following website: <E T="03">https://ibr.ansi.org/Standards/nace.aspx.</E> Finally, the NFPA standard identified in Section V.F. is available from the following website: <E T="03">https://www.nfpa.org/Codes-and-Standards/All-Codes-and-Standards/List-of-Codes-and-Standards.</E> As of the date of publication of this final rule, PHMSA was not able to reach a general agreement with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) to make the standards readily available online as ASME heavily relies on the reve ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 123k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━