[BenIndy Contributor Kathy Kerridge: We’ve recently been reminded about the threat that Benicia and the rest of the Bay Area faced from crude by rail trains. We’re facing new threats now in the form of pipelines that will be carrying dangerous CO2, which is an asphyxiant in sufficient quantities. A new project called the “Montezuma Carbon Hub” plans to take CO2 from power plants and refineries, including Valero’s Benicia Refinery, in the Bay Area by pipeline and dump it in the Montezuma Hills by Rio Vista. This article is about how the pipelines in our country are currently unsafe and prone to disastrous accidents. There really are no adequate safety inspections – something to keep in mind when we think about more pipelines carrying deadly asphyxiants being built in our neighborhoods. Will Benicia and other communities be in the death zone of the Montezuma pipelines?]

Biden’s and Trump’s energy plans each depend on building new pipelines, but landowners don’t believe the current inspection system can protect them from spills and deadly emissions. They have a point.

Politico, by Mike Soraghan, May 5, 2024

The inspectors warned for months that the construction crew was burying the pipeline on unstable ground. In at least a dozen reports, they described soupy soil, landslides and failed efforts to contain runoff. But the crew kept working as the problems mounted. The Revolution ethane pipeline had to get built.

In September 2018, just below a neighborhood outside Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, the muddy hillside gave way. The landslide severed the pipe, and the dense gas inside erupted into a roaring inferno.

The blaze incinerated a house. The family inside escaped with just the clothes they were wearing and one of their dogs. Their other pets, a dog and several cats, died in the fire.

Karen Gdula, who lives nearby on Ivy Lane, raced through the neighborhood shouting, “It’s the pipeline. Everything’s on fire. Get out now!”

“The flames were higher than the ancient pines,” she recalled.

A grand jury would later home in on the inspections, finding construction flaws went unfixed while the inspectors’ “punch list” of problems grew. The disaster might have been prevented if the pipeline developer had acted on those reports or regulators had stepped in to demand fixes.

But that’s not the system that exists, based on a year-long investigation by POLITICO’s E&E News. On jobs like Revolution, the inspectors report to the pipeline companies themselves. Regulators at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Department of Transportation and state agencies leave the monitoring of pipeline construction almost exclusively to this network of private inspectors paid by the developers. When inspectors identify safety lapses, it’s often left to the companies themselves to decide when to make fixes, or whether to make fixes at all.

Eight inspectors who’ve worked on pipeline projects in states across the country, some granted anonymity to discuss safety hazards, told E&E News that their warnings were often ignored by the pipeline companies. And if they refuse to be ignored, they say, they can be fired.

It’s a potentially deadly gap in the regulatory apparatus at a time when President Joe Biden is investing billions of dollars to bury carbon dioxide emissions in the earth — which requires a new network of pipelines. Success of so-called “carbon capture” technology could limit the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming while reducing the pain for an economy built around fossil fuels.

Former President Donald Trump’s plans may differ from Biden’s, but Trump has vowed to increase drilling and lay more oil and gas pipelines.

Pipeline companies point to the inspectors at their construction sites as evidence that the projects will be safe and environmentally sound. But many farmers and other landowners, across huge swathes of rural America, are unpersuaded. They worry about a rupture in a pipeline carrying toxic gases.

New pipeline projects have met fierce resistance, as farmers from Illinois to North Dakota insist they don’t trust the companies or their safety inspectors. Fearful landowners and skeptical regulators in South Dakota and Illinois have already tanked a large-scale carbon dioxide storage project in the Midwest that would have required 1,300 miles of pipeline running from South Dakota to Illinois.

Federal investigations, third-party analyses of pipe failures, formal complaints and interviews with more than a dozen people involved in pipeline construction reveal a system rife with lapses. Oil spills in Kansas and damage to farms in Oklahoma have been linked to flawed inspections. Inspection failures were cited by federal investigators seeking a $40 million fine for the spilling of toxic drilling fluid in Ohio. And on the Mountain Valley gas pipeline project in Virginia and West Virginia, federal appeals court judges say inspectors “failed to prevent” widespread erosion problems.

“The inspectors are like a smokescreen,” said Frank Chamberlin, a pipeline inspector from Upstate New York. “They put them on the project as a scapegoat.”

Chamberlin is one of at least three inspectors to have lodged formal whistleblower allegations that they were fired for reporting dangerous problems on pipelines. And Oklahoma landowners have lodged complaints with the FERC about an inspector on a natural gas pipeline that cuts through the state.

A federal watchdog agency found FERC’s process for selecting inspection companies and environmental reviewers creates a “potential appearance of improper influence” — in part because pipeline companies are given too much control over the process, including the power to decide which inspection companies can submit bids.

“No industry is going to police itself very well,” said Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a national advocacy group pushing for increased protections. “We need an independent regulator to be the one that does that.”

 

Conflicts in the system of self-regulation have been largely ignored by lawmakers, who are focused on streamlining the permitting process for energy companies. And state and federal regulators say they don’t have the resources to scrutinize construction as closely as they might like. Instead, they often defer to the judgment of private companies, even those with poor safety and environmental records.

The solution isn’t complicated, critics say, just more expensive and politically difficult. Lawmakers need to give regulators more money, more staff and more authority over powerful oil and gas interests.
“There’s a general reluctance to add staff like inspectors, because it upsets the industry,” said John Quigley, former head of the Department of Environmental Protection in Pennsylvania. “The buck stops at legislators’ desks, whether it’s the General Assembly or Congress.”

‘More people and more money’

The destruction caused by a pipeline explosion can be catastrophic, both in the blast zone and in areas contaminated by exposure to volatile petrochemicals.

Outside Aliquippa, a former mill town north of Pittsburgh along the Ohio River, the blast on the Revolution gas liquids pipeline led to the evacuation of 59 homes in the surrounding neighborhood. It caused the collapse of six high-voltage electric transmission towers nearby and months of disruption for those living on Ivy Lane.

Energy Transfer, the Dallas-based pipeline giant that developed Revolution, declined to comment. But the company defended itself in a statement to state regulators as part of a 2020 settlement, pointing to the inspectors they’d hired, who had “regularly visually monitored” construction.

Company officials said their practices were “reasonably intended” to protect from landslides. But, they explained, there had been “unprecedented rainfall” in the area before the explosion.

National Weather Service data shows neither August nor September 2018 had record rainfall totals in the Pittsburgh area.

Though Energy Transfer had hired inspectors, the grand jury found, it ordered them not to direct the work of contractors, and the problems weren’t fixed. Its report said efforts to control erosion were “pitiful, to put it mildly.” The report said fewer than 2 percent of erosion control devices were up to “specified engineering standards.” Energy Transfer pleaded no contest in the case, which has led to the EPA barring it from obtaining federal contracts.

Industry officials defend the privatized nature of the inspection system, comparing it to internal quality control processes adopted by factories and construction operations. They say there are plenty of safeguards, including oversight by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

“It’s the operator that’s responsible for making sure that that work is being done correctly,” said Dave Murk, senior director of midstream policy at the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s main trade group. “But ultimately, it’s PHMSA’s job, or state inspectors, to make sure what’s been done by the operator and contractors is in accordance with the regulations. The regulator is responsible for making sure it’s done safely.”

But the regulators see it differently. Without directly contradicting Murk, a PHMSA spokesperson said the agency’s position is that the operator is “fully responsible” for compliance and safety.

PHMSA has about 200 inspectors on its staff. Along with another 450 or so inspectors at state agencies, they monitor the safety of more than 3 million miles of pipe in the United States. The agency says it devotes only 7 percent of its safety-staff time to inspecting the construction of new pipelines.

Thus, the bulk of the work overseeing the rapid growth of the country’s pipeline network, and its compliance with new pipeline regulations addressing safety and environmental goals, is left to a small army of inspectors hired and paid by the companies themselves. The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America says there are at least 8,000 certified private inspectors.

Brigham McCown, one of the original leaders of the agency in its early days during the George W. Bush administration, acknowledges that PHMSA is understaffed.

“PHMSA needs more people and more money,” McCown said. “Its mission keeps expanding.”

But to McCown, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of its Initiative on American Energy Security, it makes sense for the companies to take the lead. Federal agencies simply don’t have the resources to do all the monitoring that needs to be done.

After all, he said, “If I’m smelling gas, I call the gas company.”

Actually, countered the Pipeline Safety Trust’s Caram, “a lot of people would call 911.”

‘All in the same club’

This patchwork inspection system, little-known and largely unexamined, has underlain a construction spree of more than 70,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines across the country since the end of 2010.

Now, another surge is looming.

North America’s liquefied natural gas export capacity is expected to double by 2027 with 10 new projects along the coasts. Much of that gas would be shipped by pipelines.

According to federal data, 6,000 miles of oil, gas and liquids pipelines are on the drawing board or under construction right now. And experts have said as many as 65,000 more miles of pipelines will be needed for diverting carbon dioxide to permanent storage if the country is to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

But those carbon dioxide projects are stumbling in the deep red states of the Midwest.

Fossil fuel makers, from ethanol plants to gas export terminals, see carbon capture as the way to keep selling their product in a decarbonized economy. And the Biden administration is offering rich tax subsidies for those who develop them, dulling some of the resistance to his climate policies among powerful interests.

The projects face an array of hurdles, starting with farmers’ deep-seated hostility toward eminent domain property seizures. Environmentalists who see carbon capture as a lousy way to fight climate change have brought the organizational firepower to channel that resentment into political action.

But the people being asked to live next to the pipes have another worry — clouds of asphyxiating gas pouring out of a ruptured pipeline and floating toward their homes. Many along the route have learned of a 2020 carbon pipeline rupture in Mississippi that left people in a tiny town gasping for air without knowing why, and sent 45 of them to the hospital.

Steve Hickenbottom, whose farm outside Fairfield, Iowa, was in the path of Navigator CO2 Ventures’ 1,300-mile carbon dioxide pipeline, was one of those worried by the Mississippi disaster. Late last year, the project was scuttled amid fierce opposition.

Pipeline developers insist they will build safe projects and carefully steward the land. But Hickenbottom already lived through construction of one pipeline — Energy Transfer’s Dakota Access, and the assurance that inspectors would monitor construction provided no comfort.

Under a bright blue sky last summer, Hickenbottom stood in the flatbed of his pickup and pointed over the cornstalks to where crews cut 30 feet deep through a rise in the field to bury the pipeline. That stretch of dirt, nearly eight years later, still doesn’t produce as much corn as the soil on either side. Asked about Hickenbottom’s complaint, Vicki Granado, spokeswoman for Dakota Access developer Energy Transfer, said he hadn’t brought his complaints to the pipeline company and therefore she couldn’t comment.

According to Hickenbottom, the inspectors for the Dakota Access project seemed downright chummy with the construction crew they were supposed to monitor. And he said they watched as the crews did $200,000 worth of damage to the drainage tile system laid out below the surface. He didn’t think the inspectors for the carbon dioxide pipeline would do any better.“They’re all in the same club. They’re not going to crap on the guys they work with every day,” Hickenbottom said. “It means zero to me.”

‘Job scared’

For inspectors who don’t want to be chummy, the feeling that they’re caught between doing their job and keeping their job is common enough there’s a term for it — “job scared.”

“If you come forward with these issues, you get fired or harassed,” Chamberlin, the inspector who filed a whistleblower complaint, said in an interview last summer. “Those are the words we hear all the time — ‘job scared.’”

Chamberlin says he was “blackballed” after flagging safety problems on an ethane pipeline through Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Chamberlin started as an inspector in 2008. Like most of his colleagues, he jumped from project to project, picking up work among a small network of inspectors and placement firms.

There were good projects and bad, he said. But he saw a lot of things he didn’t like. He recalled finding dangerous conditions for workers and construction mistakes that could lead to ruptures, such as laying pipe on top of solid rock without padding.

Many times, his bosses told him to ignore the problems. Usually, he found that being a stickler just got him moved to a different part of a construction project.

That changed in 2019, when he was an inspector for the Falcon pipeline, which now supplies ethane to a massive new petrochemical plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh.

Chamberlin declined to talk about the specifics of his departure from the project and his whistleblower case, which concluded with a settlement. But his account was laid out in his case file obtained by E&E News.

Chamberlin said he was fired because he complained about safety problems with how the pipeline was being installed. “We were told ‘Just collect your paycheck – look straight ahead,’” Chamberlin wrote in his initial complaint. “‘If you bring this up they will run you off.’”

Shell PLC, the owner of the 97-mile pipeline, said Chamberlin was ordered off the project due to “poor performance and insubordinate behavior.” Shell spokesperson Curtis Smith said the company has an “unwavering” commitment to safe construction and operation of the Falcon pipeline.

PHMSA investigated his allegations and said no safety problems were found. But Pennsylvania officials urged the federal agency to re-do its investigation, saying the inquiry in 2019 was “incomplete.” PHMSA did not respond to questions about Pennsylvania’s concerns.

Last month, Chamberlin’s accusations led to 13 misdemeanor criminal charges against Shell for covering up spills during construction of Falcon. One state environmental regulator said her agency would “never have known” about the spills if Chamberlin hadn’t come forward.

A Shell spokesman said the company is reviewing the charges, and said Falcon was built in a “safe, environmentally responsible” manner.

Chamberlin says he’s still paying the price for coming forward. Pushed out of the industry, he said he worries about losing the home where he lives in upstate New York.

“I’m out of work. I’ve never been out of work in my life,” he said in the interview. “I’m good at my job, and here I am.”

Pressuring inspectors

Private inspectors are supposed to be watching the construction contractor on behalf of the pipeline company that hired them. As one industry guide puts it, an inspector “acts as the Owner Company’s authorized representative.”

But if that company is focused on speed and cost-cutting, quality can suffer. That’s what federal investigators say happened during construction of Energy Transfer’s 711-mile Rover natural gas pipeline project from Ohio to southern Michigan.

The private inspectors on the project were untrained, lacked direction and left powerless, the investigators from FERC said. Their 2021 enforcement reportquoted an employee saying inspectors “[s]leep in the trucks.” An inspector told them that when he told a foreman to fix a problem, he got scolded by his boss and told to back off.

Key inspectors on Rover failed to notice what would become a 2-million-gallon spill of drilling fluid next to the Tuscarawas River or that diesel had been added to the fluid before it leaked, according to the report. Others did notice, but stayed quiet.

The company had assured those living along the route that the pipeline would be built with “the most advanced technology” to make it safe and environmentally friendly. But FERC said executives of Energy Transfer pressured inspectors and fostered a “corporate culture that favored speed and construction progress over regulatory compliance.”

An Energy Transfer spokesperson declined to comment further on the Rover case “due to ongoing litigation.” But the company has previously blamed a “rogue employee” working for a contractor for the addition of diesel fuel and said it cannot be blamed for the actions of the contractor. FERC is seeking a $40 million fine for the spill. The case is pending.

Separately, federal pipeline safety regulators cited Energy Transfer for safety problems on Rover, which the company did not contest.

‘The hand that feeds him’

Oklahoma farmer Mark Schweitzer says the inspector who monitored construction of the Midship natural gas pipeline across his land is a prime example of how the conflicts of interest in the system shortchange landowners.

“He’s supposed to be working for FERC, but he gets paid by Midship,” Schweitzer said in a phone interview. “He’s not going to bite the hand that feeds him.”

Cheniere Energy Inc., the natural gas export giant, installed Midship, 200 miles long and 3-feet wide, through the hayfields and pumpjack-studded cow pastures of central Oklahoma.

Many of the farmers along Midship say Cheniere carved a path of destruction through their land. They say crews buried construction trash in their cropland, let precious topsoil wash into the creeks or mixed it with lumpy clay and wrecked the contours they’d sculpted into the landscape.

As a major pipeline supplying export facilities, Midship’s construction was overseen by FERC. On those projects, there’s often an additional layer of inspection — a group of inspectors called “compliance monitors” who technically report to FERC. Still, they are contractors, and their pay comes from the pipeline developers, who can also have a say in which firms get chosen for the job.

FERC also oversees hydropower and electricity projects. But Carolyn Elefant, a former FERC attorney who now represents landowners, says pipeline enforcement is the only area in which FERC relies solely on company-funded monitors.

“It raises severe conflict of interest concerns, not to mention problematic optics,” Elefant said in a 2021 filing on behalf of Midship landowners. “This needs to change.”

FERC officials counter that the compliance monitor system allows FERC to have a daily presence along the construction projects they permit. They also say compliance monitors are impartial, and work exclusively for the agency, not the pipeline company, even though the company pays them.

“Commission staff selected specific monitors that have decades of experience and proven knowledge of the enforcement requirements,” Richard Glick, then the chair of FERC, wrote in response to questions from Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) in 2021.

As chair, Glick elevated the issue of how landowners were treated, criticizing companies such as Cheniere for failing to fix land their projects damaged. In a recent interview, he said the perception that inspectors have a conflict of interest needs to be addressed.

“Landowners need to have faith that their land will be sufficiently restored in a timely manner after the pipeline construction is complete,” Glick said.

Cheniere officials also say they believe FERC’s inspection process does deliver independent assessments.

Nearly four years after operations began on the pipeline, however, restoration of the farmers’ land remains incomplete. Cheniere had assured FERC the cleanup would be done in a matter of months after the pipeline was turned on in April 2020.

A Cheniere spokesperson said the company “continues to meet the conditions set forth by FERC and work diligently with landowners to safely restore land along the pipeline route.” The company says it has done so while dealing with weather problems and difficult demands from landowners, which create obstacles to finishing repairs.

Schweitzer and other landowners along the 200-mile Midship route have complained about the inspector by name to FERC, saying he’s too deferential to the pipeline company. The inspector, Dan Beisner, defended his actions in an interview.

“The FERC inspector can only report what they see,” Beisner said. “I had nothing to gain by presenting misleading information.”

But he didn’t defend Cheniere or the crews that installed the pipeline for it. Cheniere, he said, failed to manage what he saw as a “rogue contractor.” Farmers’ vital topsoil washed away because of poor construction practices, he said. When crews found themselves in muck, they did little to fix the damage.

“It was just poor management,” Beisner said. “The gas company did not proactively manage their contractors.”

‘Improper influence’

Claims of a flawed and potentially dangerous inspection process have hounded other major pipeline projects. They include the proposed U.S.-Canada Keystone XL, which became a political flashpoint from the end of the Obama administration through the Trump administration until Biden killed it on his first day in office.

After the State Department used the FERC environmental review process for Keystone XL, State’s inspector general stated that the process creates a “potential appearance of improper influence,” in part because pipeline companies are given too much control over who is selected. They choose which inspection companies get asked to bid, screen the applications and then send the agency their top three choices, ranked in order of preference.

FERC declined to comment about the report. The State Department investigators asked FERC officials about the potential conflicts of interest. FERC’s response, paraphrased in State’s report, was that it’s not a problem for the company to pay the contractor because the rules allow it.

“Given that this is permissible under the process,” the report said, “the issue of the applicant’s paying for the EIS contractor has never become an allegation of improper influence.”

Allegations of problems with FERC’s contract inspectors also contributed to the pile-up of legal problems which have bedeviled the Mountain Valley pipeline that cuts across the Appalachian Range through Virginia and West Virginia. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling last year ordering FERC to explain why it didn’t require a new environmental review in the wake of severe erosion clogging creeks along the pipeline route. Part of the judges’ reasoning was that FERC’s monitoring program “failed” to prevent erosion problems along the line’s rugged path.

When the case was argued in April 2022, one of the judges pressed FERC on why the private inspectors working for the agency “couldn’t connect the dots” on environmental violations such as erosion and mudslides. Asked about the judges’ comments, Natalie Cox, a Mountain Valley spokesperson, said this description of the court’s decision is “not an accurate representation,” but did not respond when asked for specifics.

During construction of the Keystone pipeline — the less controversial sibling to the canceled Keystone XL pipeline — records show problems went undetected. And that led to spills. Since beginning operations in 2010, Keystone has spilled more than a million gallons in eight incidents on the line, which transports oil from Canada to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas. In the two largest incidents, independent investigation reports obtained by E&E News pointed to problems with inspections as root causes of the spills.

One cited “lapses in construction oversight and quality control.” The other stated some damage on the line wasn’t detected or reported during inspections.

Keystone operator TC Energy Corp., in a statement, said safety is paramount and the company will “stop at nothing” to reach its goal of zero incidents. It added that company officials “actively engaged” with regulators during construction.

“The pipeline, which is monitored and controlled 24/7, has met or exceeded all regulatory and code requirements in the jurisdictions where we operate,” the statement said.

Critics like the Pipeline Safety Trust’s Caram maintain that if a pipeline can be built without violating regulations, and then still suffer repeated spills discharging more than a million gallons, that simply demonstrates what’s wrong with the process.

“The public has this idea that when PHMSA inspects, they’re out in the field looking at pipe or in their control room watching them in action,” Caram said. “I think a lot of members of the public are shocked to learn it’s pretty much a paperwork exercise.”

of Energy Transfer pressured inspectors and fostered a “corporate culture that favored speed and construction progress over regulatory compliance.”

An Energy Transfer spokesperson declined to comment further on the Rover case “due to ongoing litigation.” But the company has previously blamed a “rogue employee” working for a contractor for the addition of diesel fuel and said it cannot be blamed for the actions of the contractor. FERC is seeking a $40 million fine for the spill. The case is pending.

Separately, federal pipeline safety regulators cited Energy Transfer for safety problems on Rover, which the company did not contest.

‘The hand that feeds him’

Oklahoma farmer Mark Schweitzer says the inspector who monitored construction of the Midship natural gas pipeline across his land is a prime example of how the conflicts of interest in the system shortchange landowners.

“He’s supposed to be working for FERC, but he gets paid by Midship,” Schweitzer said in a phone interview. “He’s not going to bite the hand that feeds him.”

Cheniere Energy Inc., the natural gas export giant, installed Midship, 200 miles long and 3-feet wide, through the hayfields and pumpjack-studded cow pastures of central Oklahoma.

Many of the farmers along Midship say Cheniere carved a path of destruction through their land. They say crews buried construction trash in their cropland, let precious topsoil wash into the creeks or mixed it with lumpy clay and wrecked the contours they’d sculpted into the landscape.

As a major pipeline supplying export facilities, Midship’s construction was overseen by FERC. On those projects, there’s often an additional layer of inspection — a group of inspectors called “compliance monitors” who technically report to FERC. Still, they are contractors, and their pay comes from the pipeline developers, who can also have a say in which firms get chosen for the job.

FERC also oversees hydropower and electricity projects. But Carolyn Elefant, a former FERC attorney who now represents landowners, says pipeline enforcement is the only area in which FERC relies solely on company-funded monitors.

“It raises severe conflict of interest concerns, not to mention problematic optics,” Elefant said in a 2021 filing on behalf of Midship landowners. “This needs to change.”

FERC officials counter that the compliance monitor system allows FERC to have a daily presence along the construction projects they permit. They also say compliance monitors are impartial, and work exclusively for the agency, not the pipeline company, even though the company pays them.

“Commission staff selected specific monitors that have decades of experience and proven knowledge of the enforcement requirements,” Richard Glick, then the chair of FERC, wrote in response to questions from Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) in 2021.

As chair, Glick elevated the issue of how landowners were treated, criticizing companies such as Cheniere for failing to fix land their projects damaged. In a recent interview, he said the perception that inspectors have a conflict of interest needs to be addressed.

“Landowners need to have faith that their land will be sufficiently restored in a timely manner after the pipeline construction is complete,” Glick said.

Cheniere officials also say they believe FERC’s inspection process does deliver independent assessments.

Nearly four years after operations began on the pipeline, however, restoration of the farmers’ land remains incomplete. Cheniere had assured FERC the cleanup would be done in a matter of months after the pipeline was turned on in April 2020.

A Cheniere spokesperson said the company “continues to meet the conditions set forth by FERC and work diligently with landowners to safely restore land along the pipeline route.” The company says it has done so while dealing with weather problems and difficult demands from landowners, which create obstacles to finishing repairs.

Schweitzer and other landowners along the 200-mile Midship route have complained about the inspector by name to FERC, saying he’s too deferential to the pipeline company. The inspector, Dan Beisner, defended his actions in an interview.

“The FERC inspector can only report what they see,” Beisner said. “I had nothing to gain by presenting misleading information.”

But he didn’t defend Cheniere or the crews that installed the pipeline for it. Cheniere, he said, failed to manage what he saw as a “rogue contractor.” Farmers’ vital topsoil washed away because of poor construction practices, he said. When crews found themselves in muck, they did little to fix the damage.

“It was just poor management,” Beisner said. “The gas company did not proactively manage their contractors.”

‘Improper influence’

Claims of a flawed and potentially dangerous inspection process have hounded other major pipeline projects. They include the proposed U.S.-Canada Keystone XL, which became a political flashpoint from the end of the Obama administration through the Trump administration until Biden killed it on his first day in office.

After the State Department used the FERC environmental review process for Keystone XL, State’s inspector general stated that the process creates a “potential appearance of improper influence,” in part because pipeline companies are given too much control over who is selected. They choose which inspection companies get asked to bid, screen the applications and then send the agency their top three choices, ranked in order of preference.

FERC declined to comment about the report. The State Department investigators asked FERC officials about the potential conflicts of interest. FERC’s response, paraphrased in State’s report, was that it’s not a problem for the company to pay the contractor because the rules allow it.

“Given that this is permissible under the process,” the report said, “the issue of the applicant’s paying for the EIS contractor has never become an allegation of improper influence.”

Allegations of problems with FERC’s contract inspectors also contributed to the pile-up of legal problems which have bedeviled the Mountain Valley pipeline that cuts across the Appalachian Range through Virginia and West Virginia. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling last year ordering FERC to explain why it didn’t require a new environmental review in the wake of severe erosion clogging creeks along the pipeline route. Part of the judges’ reasoning was that FERC’s monitoring program “failed” to prevent erosion problems along the line’s rugged path.

When the case was argued in April 2022, one of the judges pressed FERC on why the private inspectors working for the agency “couldn’t connect the dots” on environmental violations such as erosion and mudslides. Asked about the judges’ comments, Natalie Cox, a Mountain Valley spokesperson, said this description of the court’s decision is “not an accurate representation,” but did not respond when asked for specifics.

During construction of the Keystone pipeline — the less controversial sibling to the canceled Keystone XL pipeline — records show problems went undetected. And that led to spills. Since beginning operations in 2010, Keystone has spilled more than a million gallons in eight incidents on the line, which transports oil from Canada to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas. In the two largest incidents, independent investigation reports obtained by E&E News pointed to problems with inspections as root causes of the spills.

One cited “lapses in construction oversight and quality control.” The other stated some damage on the line wasn’t detected or reported during inspections.

Keystone operator TC Energy Corp., in a statement, said safety is paramount and the company will “stop at nothing” to reach its goal of zero incidents. It added that company officials “actively engaged” with regulators during construction.

“The pipeline, which is monitored and controlled 24/7, has met or exceeded all regulatory and code requirements in the jurisdictions where we operate,” the statement said.

Critics like the Pipeline Safety Trust’s Caram maintain that if a pipeline can be built without violating regulations, and then still suffer repeated spills discharging more than a million gallons, that simply demonstrates what’s wrong with the process.

“The public has this idea that when PHMSA inspects, they’re out in the field looking at pipe or in their control room watching them in action,” Caram said. “I think a lot of members of the public are shocked to learn it’s pretty much a paperwork exercise.”