Last month Rep Peters (D,CA) introduced HR 4818, the Gas Pipeline Leak Detection and Repair Act of 2025. The bill would provide an effective date for the “the final rule of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issued under section 60102(q) of title 49, United States Code, on January 17, 2025, relating to “Pipeline Safety: Gas Pipeline Leak Detection and Repair” (Docket No. PHMSA–2021–0039; RIN 2137–AF51) [link added]”. No new funding is authorized.
Rulemaking Background
On December 27th, 2020 Congress added {§113 of PL 116–260}subsection (q) to 49 USC 60102. That new section set forth requirements for ‘Gas Pipeline Leak Detection and Repair’. It required the Secretary to “promulgate final regulations” on requiring facilities to conduct leak detection and repair programs. Those regulations were to be promulgated within one year of the enactment of PL 116-260, a steep deadline to be sure.
DOT got around to publishing a notice of proposed rulemaking on May 18th, 2023. A large number (26,614) of comments were filed on that docket, both pro and con. It would be safe to say that industry had a number of concerns about many of the provisions of that NPRM.
During it’s review process OIRA hosted ten separate EO 12866 meetings with PHMSA and members of the regulated community about the provisions of that final rule. OIRA heard a great number of industry objections during those discussions. A good summary of those objections can be found in the OIRA report on the last meeting.
On October 18th, 2024, PHMSA sent a final rule to the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review. On January 17th, 2025 (effectively the last day of the Biden Administration) OIRA announced that it had ‘concluded action’ on that final rule. Typically, this means that the rule should be sent to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) for printing. In this case, however, OIRA’s announced final action was characterized as “Statutory or Judicial Deadline”.
No Final Rule was published in the Federal Register. Of course, on January 20th, 2025 (the next business day in Washington) the new President was inaugurated and almost immediately signed the expected executive memorandum freezing all ongoing rulemaking activities. Section 1 of that order would have prohibited DOT from sending this rulemaking to the OFR. Section 2 would have required any rule that had been sent to the OFR, but not published in the FR, to be withdrawn for review.
I suspect that DOT submitted the final rule to the OFR before noon on the 20th (most likely on Friday the 17th), knowing that the Secretary’s signature on that document would have technically fulfilled the requirement of ‘promulgating’ the overdue final rule. I say this because there was no ‘withdrawal’ notice published by OIRA, so it was no longer in their hands, so to speak. And that supposed case would speak to the requirement in this bill to assign an effective date for the unpublished final rule.
What is less clear is the current status of that rulemaking. The ‘latest’ listing in the Unified Agenda was in in the Biden Administration’s Fall 2024 Unified Agenda, and that still lists it as pending action on the final rule. The Trump Administration has yet to publish their Spring 2025 Unified Agenda. When that version (or perhaps skipping that requirement and going directly to a Fall 2025 Unified Agenda) is published, I expect to see this rulemaking moved to the Long Term Action portion of the agenda, since the required rules would run afoul of the Administration’s energy policy.
Moving Forward
While Peters is not a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to which this bill was assigned for primary consideration, one of his five co-sponsors {Rep Huffman (D,CA)} is a member of the Committee. That means that there could be (theoretically) enough influence to see this bill considered in Committee. Unfortunately, the expected provisions of the regulation conflict with the Republican energy agenda which is a high priority in the 119th Congress. That means that there is almost no chance of this bill seeing the light of day in a hearing room, much less on the floor of the House.