California repeatedly warned about spiking gas prices, fragile supply. But fixes never came
California regulators and industry experts knew about California’s overheated gas prices for years before the state’s current problem started to emerge.
The state Department of Natural Resources even created guidelines to address the issue in 2009, which would have prevented the gas prices explosion by encouraging energy efficiency on home heating systems. But regulators never followed up on the idea. State regulators also repeatedly warned about potential problems with the state’s gas pipeline system, which runs through California’s most populous areas – a warning that was echoed by a recent study.
In short, regulators in California knew about the potential problems with the gas pipeline system but did nothing – until it was too late and gas prices exploded and became the state’s biggest crisis ever.
“We’re talking about a crisis that they knew was coming, long before we did. They had plenty of warnings.” Michael Brune, president of the gas pipeline safety consulting company, Gas Safety Engineering.
Gas pipelines are regulated by the California Department of Transportation – it’s not a state regulator, it’s an entity under the DOT. It doesn’t have any powers over gas pipelines. Instead, the DOT has a regulatory responsibility to ensure that there is no problem with gas pipelines. The DOT does not enforce any safety standards, it is meant to enforce the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s regulations.
But because the DOT has no enforcement power, it can’t force companies operating pipelines to make changes to their design or install safety equipment to prevent a hazard.
The gas pipeline crisis in California was already occurring before it was noticed by regulators – there was a problem even before deregulation of gas pipelines from the ’70s through the ’90s – but regulators weren’t paying any attention to it, according to Michael Brune, president of Gas Safety Engineering. He says the California DOT first became aware of the issue four years ago, when the company Gas Safety Engineering first began to study the problem of pipeline rupture in California.
In 2009, Gas Safety Engineering began talking to regulators and industry experts about problems related to ruptured gas pipelines in California. Brune says regulatory and industry experts told him there were a number of problems associated with the state�
