{"id":269433,"date":"2026-01-06T01:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T01:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/269433\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T01:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T01:59:09","slug":"pipeline-safety-regulators-issue-record-fine-for-gulf-oil-spill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/269433\/","title":{"rendered":"Pipeline safety regulators issue record fine for Gulf oil spill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million gallons of oil<\/a> into the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana in 2023. But the $9.6 million fine isn\u2019t likely to be a major burden for Third Coast to pay. <\/p>\n

This single fine is close to the normal total of $8 million to $10 million in all fines that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hands out each year. But Third Coast has a stake in some 1,900 miles of pipelines, and in September, the Houston-based company announced<\/a> that it had secured a nearly $1 billion loan.<\/p>\n

Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram said this spill \u201cresulted from a company-wide systemic failure, indicating the operator\u2019s fundamental inability to implement pipeline safety regulations,\u201d so the record fine is appropriate and welcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, even record fines often fail to be financially meaningful to pipeline operators. The proposed fine represents less than 3% of Third Coast Midstream\u2019s estimated annual earnings,\u201d Caram said. \u201cTrue deterrence requires penalties that make noncompliance more expensive than compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency said Third Coast didn\u2019t establish proper emergency procedures, which is part of why the National Transportation Safety Board found that operators failed to shut down the pipeline<\/a> for nearly 13 hours after their gauges first hinted at a problem. PHMSA also said the company didn\u2019t adequately assess the risks or properly maintain the 18-inch Main Pass Oil Gathering pipeline. <\/p>\n

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The agency said the company \u201cfailed to perform new integrity analyses or evaluations following changes in circumstances that identified new and elevated risk factors\u201d for the pipeline. <\/p>\n

That echoed what the NTSB said in its final report in June, that \u201cThird Coast missed several opportunities to evaluate how geohazards may threaten the integrity of their pipeline. Information widely available within the industry suggested that land movement related to hurricane activity was a threat to pipelines.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NTSB said<\/a> the leak off the coast of Louisiana was the result of underwater landslides, caused by hazards such as hurricanes, that Third Coast, the pipeline owner, failed to address despite the threats being well known in the industry.<\/p>\n

A Third Coast spokesperson said the allegations<\/a> were a shock because the company \u201cconsistently meets or exceeds regulatory requirements across our operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter constructive engagement with PHMSA over the last two years, we were surprised to see aspects of the recent allegations that we believe are inaccurate and exceed established precedent. We will address these concerns with the agency moving forward,\u201d the company spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The amount of oil spilled in this incident was far less than the 2010 BP oil disaster<\/a>, when 134 million gallons were released in the weeks following an oil rig explosion, but it could have been much smaller if workers in the Third Coast control room had acted more quickly, the NTSB said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[269],"tags":[100252,21482,137609,79,3898,3477,137608,18,440,8269,2129,3334,21419,38402,19,124485,17,137607,105038,35101,19177,76490,121726,133,2461,16697,4077],"class_list":["post-269433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-al-state-wire","tag-alabama","tag-bill-caram","tag-business","tag-climate","tag-climate-and-environment","tag-corporate-law-and-regulation","tag-eire","tag-environment","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-general-news","tag-gulf-of-mexico","tag-houston","tag-ie","tag-industry-regulation","tag-ireland","tag-la-state-wire","tag-local-news-for-apple","tag-louisiana","tag-mississippi","tag-ms-state-wire","tag-oil-spills","tag-science","tag-texas","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-u-s-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115845684542755055","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}