Gas Blasts Spur Questions on Oversight

At a Christmas Eve gathering in 2008, a natural gas explosion in a suburban Sacramento neighborhood killed a 72-year-old man and injured his daughter and granddaughter. Investigators determined that Pacific Gas and Electric was to blame for a leak, but federal and state regulators never cited the utility for safety violations.

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Jim Wilson/The New York Times

SAN BRUNO, CALIF., SEPT. 9, 2010 Fire investigators searched houses in the Crestmont neighborhood after a high-pressure natural gas line exploded, killing seven people and injuring more than 50. Investigators have not determined the cause.

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Disparities in Enforcement

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Ronald W. Erdrich/Abilene Reporter-News, via Associated Press

ABILENE, TEX., SEPT. 7, 2000 Firefighters soaked the ground at the site of a pipeline explosion in an effort to keep the flames from spreading to the tinder-dry countryside. An off-duty police officer was killed and two people were injured.

It was one example of what many experts and studies say is weak oversight of gas pipelines in the United States, a problem that has contributed to hundreds of pipeline episodes that have killed 60 people and injured 230 others in the last five years. Those figures do not include the final toll of the explosion of another Pacific Gas and Electric pipeline this month in San Bruno, Calif., that left seven people dead and more than 50 injured.
Though the cause of that explosion was still under investigation, it was the latest event to raise concerns among safety experts. Several independent government reviews, going back several years, have found systemic problems with the way the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal agency in charge of pipeline oversight, enforces safety rules.
In 2004, for example, the General Accounting Office documented how pipeline safety enforcement “needs further strengthening.” It noted that average fines of less than $30,000 offered little deterrence and that the agency had trouble collecting the fines.
A 2008 Congressional Research Service report said that the enforcement strategy of federal agencies of the nation’s pipelines was an “ongoing concern.”
“I believe there is a lack of a strong safety culture in the natural gas industry,” said Jim Hall, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001 and an experienced pipeline investigator. “When you have a lack of enforcement activity, you end up with a tragedy.”
An examination of the pipeline agency’s safety record points to many shortcomings, as well. For example, a review by The New York Times of all enforcement cases initiated during the past eight years shows that a third of them are unresolved.
While the average fine has gone up, the amount is unclear, based on federal records, and the number of fines issued by the pipeline agency fell 40 percent last year compared with 2004, when the G.A.O. issued its critical report.
Several cases from the early 1990s remained open until last year. Some cases involving unsafe pipelines and dating back more than eight years were still being investigated.
The pipeline agency has acknowledged that it lost track of some enforcement actions, not knowing whether cases had been resolved or fines had been paid. The agency said it solved that problem last year with a new database to track cases.
It defended its enforcement work, saying that it has made improvements, particularly in the last two years, to resolve lingering cases. And it is seeking legislative approval to increase its oversight. “This administration has significantly stepped up enforcement of P.H.M.S.A. pipeline safety regulations,” said Cynthia L. Quarterman, the agency’s administrator.
Industry trade groups say that despite the accidents, pipelines are among the nation’s safest way to deliver fuel to homes and businesses. And not every case is the fault of pipeline operators.
Utilities reported to federal regulators that roughly half of significant “incidents,” as they are known in the industry, are the fault of others, including cases in which builders, cable companies and utilities excavate and unwittingly dig into underground gas pipes.
But federal records show that many serious episodes are caused by factors for which utilities are responsible, including pipeline corrosion, operator errors and malfunctioning equipment.
They include at least two dozen excavations where pipeline operators themselves dug into their own lines, something that Pacific Gas reported doing at least twice in recent years. Texas regulators recently determined that a June explosion of a large gas transmission line from excavation was the fault of an operator that failed to mark the pipeline properly.
The pipeline agency directly oversees huge transmission lines that cross state borders. But for most pipelines it relies on state agencies. It certifies the agencies to ensure that they enforce rules based on national standards. It helps finance them, provides training, and relies on them to conduct inspections.

U.S. Gift for Iraqi Students Offers a Primer on Corruption

BAGHDAD — The shipment of laptop computers that arrived in Iraq’s main seaport in February was a small but important part of the American military’s mission here to win hearts and minds. What happened afterward is a tale of good intentions mugged by Iraq’s reality.

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Moises Saman for The New York Times

The case of the missing computers took as many twists as the stairs on a ship docked at the port.

The computers — 8,080 in all, worth $1.8 million — were bought for schoolchildren in Babil, modern-day Babylon, a gift of the American taxpayers. Only they became mired for months in customs at the port, Umm Qasr, stalled by bureaucracy or venality, or some combination of the two. And then they were gone.
Corruption is so rampant here — and American reconstruction efforts so replete with their own mismanagement — that the fate of the computers could have ended as an anecdote in a familiar, if disturbing trend. Iraq, after all, ranks above only Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Somalia on Transparency International’s annual corruption index.
But the American military commander in southern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, was clearly furious. Even if the culprits are not exactly known, the victims are: Iraqi children and American taxpayers. He issued a rare and stinging public rebuke of a government that the United States hopes to treat as an equal, strategic partner — flawed, perhaps, but getting better.
In a statement, he demanded an investigation into the actions of “a senior Umm Qasr official,” who, even now, has not been identified.
The disclosure embarrassed the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who, in the middle of a protracted political fight to win a second term, could hardly have welcomed the headlines.
“They are stealing the computers of students,” the newspaper Al Nasiriya declared, voicing a populist outrage at Iraq’s government that is becoming fairly common.
It also put the United States Embassy in Baghdad in a bind. Diplomats here, like their counterparts in Afghanistan, have found themselves forced to address — delicately — the misdeeds a nominally democratic government that American military force brought to power.
The embassy promptly took charge of making statements about the affair, and then stopped making any, preferring to handle the matter diplomatically — that is, with as little public fuss as possible.
General Brooks’s spokeswoman referred questions back to the embassy. The original statement disappeared from the Web site of the American military in Iraq — “in error,” according to a spokesman, who said it would be restored, though it had not been by Saturday.
The laptops arrived in two shipments, on Feb. 20 and Feb. 23. The original shipping documents mistakenly listed the computers’ destination as Umm Qasr, not Babil, which caused confusion. By April, though, the American military had tracked them down and repeatedly tried to clear them through customs and truck them to Babil.
Then, in August, Iraqis auctioned off 4,200 of the computers — for $45,700. The whereabouts of the rest are unknown.
Prodded by the Americans and Iraqi officials in Babil, Mr. Maliki ordered an investigation by the Commission on Integrity, a besieged independent watchdog whose investigations have led to clashes with Mr. Maliki and other senior officials.
Investigations involving official malfeasance here have a mixed record at best, rarely resulting in criminal charges, let alone convictions, especially when they involve senior officials.
Mr. Maliki’s, though, produced results — of a sort.
In early September, the auctioned computers were recovered, according to Iraqi officials, who nevertheless declined to discuss how or where. They had been sold to a businessman in Basra, Hussein Nuri al-Hassan. He could not be found last week at the address he gave when buying the computers..
None of the officials, most of whom would speak only on the condition of anonymity, could explain what happened to the rest of the computers.
And officials in Baghdad, Basra and Umm Qasr, when asked about the auction, continued to deny wrongdoing, saying the computers were sold according to established rules governing imports left unclaimed after 90 days.
Last week there was another breakthrough — of a sort.
Iraqi officials in Basra and Baghdad said that arrest warrants had been issued for 10 customs employees at Umm Qasr, all low-level officials. Six were said to have been detained. The officials refused to identify them, though. Nor were the charges made public, leaving the details of the case as shrouded in mystery as many facts are in Iraq.
“We are still investigating,” an official from the Commission on Integrity said. “We cannot give anymore information now, but soon you will receive a lot of information about this issue.”

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