The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has a robust regulatory regime for ensuring pipeline safety.

In the UK there are approximately 22,000 km of pipelines defined as major accident hazard pipelines (MAHPs) by the Pipelines Safety Regulations 1996. Approximately 20,000 km of these MAHPs transport natural gas at above 700 kilopascals. The remainder transport ethylene and other volatile fluids.

Pipeline operators in Great Britain are required to comply with a number of different aspects of legislation and regulations to ensure the pipelines are properly designed, built, operated, maintained and decommissioned.

The Gas and Pipelines Unit is responsible for the enforcement of health and safety law in relation to all pipelines in the UK, its territorial waters and the UK’s Continental Shelf. In particular, it enforces health and safety laws for operators of pipelines classed as MAHPs.

Overseeing operator safety compliance

The focus of the Gas and Pipelines Unit’s efforts are to improve health and safety outcomes in the UK through progressive improvements in risk management. This is achieved by ensuring that risks are properly controlled at onshore MAHP sites, and by working with the Offshore Division (OSD) to ensure the integrity of offshore installations and associated pipelines.

The Unit contributes to OSD’s targets by ensuring the integrity of emergency shutdown valves, pig traps, risers, pressure protection systems, sub-sea isolation valves, and wellhead pipework.

The Unit’s work includes the assessment of safety cases under the Gas Safety (Management) Regulations 1996 (GSMR); pipeline aspects of safety cases under the Offshore Safety Case Regulations 2005; safety reports under the Control of Major Accident Hazard Regulations 1999 (COMAH); and, pipeline notifications under the Pipelines Safety Regulations 1996 (PSR).

HSE’s specialist pipelines inspectors assess the way each operator manages the risk through examination of design, operation and maintenance regimes, backed up by inspection of the assets themselves. The inspector examines pipelines and above ground installations during the construction phase to make sure that the materials and techniques being used are in accordance with the design. In addition, the HSE develops intervention plans relating to each pipeline and operator to reflect risk and other parameters.

HSE also inspects pipelines during the operation phase as part of its National Transmission System (NTS) intervention plan, which is the basis of HSE’s inspections for all 6,800 km of the system.

Looking to the future

The HSE Gas and Pipeline Unit’s Operational Strategy 2008–13 outlines the new challenges facing the industry in the immediate future.

The strategy document states that while production from the UK offshore oil and gas industry is declining, there is a continuing programme of bringing new oil and gas fields on stream.

Key issues include:

• Leadership from senior managers to ensure that pipeline safety is managed by all aspects of the business;
• Ensuring that operators develop and use key performance and safety performance indicators to ensure that they gather and evaluate the information they need to manage pipeline risks; and,
• The HSE consults with stakeholders and central government in the development of new pipeline safety regulations.

Often these new developments are subsea and involve new pipelines, sometimes with difficult technical features such as high temperatures or deep water, which require specialised engineering solutions. As a result industry is considering options to extend operational parameters beyond previously accepted levels. Some installations are approaching the end of their design life and operators are looking for novel means of recovery of hydrocarbons from marginal fields.

Head of Gas and Pipelines Unit Tony Hetherington said “We must ensure that safety standards are maintained both by established operating companies under pressure to cut costs, and by the new players who now operate some fields.

“Well-established pipeline standards have been the cornerstone of delivering high standards of safety and we will continue to encourage their development.”