Oil and gas gathering lines bring extracted oil and gas from wellheads to storage facilities, where the resources can then be moved in bulk to larger distribution, processing, and refining centers prior to their combustion by end users.

When gathering lines are no longer in use to transport oil or gas they go from "active" status to temporarily "idle," but they could be reused again in the future. After a period of time, with a deadline mainly determined by states, if they are not put back into use, they are supposed to be "abandoned" or "decommissioned," the terms to safely disconnect, clean out, and permanently cap old pipelines. Unfortunately, this doesn't always happen. Unused lines that have not been properly abandoned or decommissioned could remain on idle status longer than is required. Those with no known owner or responsible party are known as "orphaned." Their small width and the lack of maps for gathering lines means that people may not know where some of them are, increasing the risk of potential harm. Non-active oil and gas gathering lines, just like operating lines, can pose major hazards to nearby communities, the environment, and plant and animal species. Just because they may be small does not mean they are not dangerous.

Our previous blog post detailed the environmental and safety hazards related to gas gathering lines and recommendations from reports on the issue released by the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2012 and 2024. The GAO consistently highlights how the federal government's failure to regulate or even track the location of oil, gas, and other hazardous material gathering lines increases the risk of this infrastructure becoming orphaned.

Delayed or inadequate gathering pipeline decommissioning has already led to several risks to the surrounding environment and communities. GAO describes these potential harms in their 2024 report based on interviews with officials. These hazards include:

• Spills: Oil spills are a common risk, in particular when pipelines are ruptured following landslides, contaminating the nearby environment.
• Emissions: Gas gathering lines emit methane and other pollutants into the atmosphere under any operating status. Methane, a significant greenhouse gas, is flammable and potentially explosive.
• Explosions: Undetected cracks or ruptures caused by a variety of things, ranging from nearby construction to natural events like earthquakes or floods, can lead to an explosion.

Compounding these issues is the fact that the locations of these gathering lines are not required to be made available to the government or the public-they are hidden secrets. Gathering lines remain absent from the National Pipeline Mapping System (NPMS) GIS database (which compiles data on the location of transmission pipelines and other lines carrying hazardous liquids and gas), further increasing risks to communities and the environment.

Similarly, no policy requires operators to report accidents related to their gathering lines to the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA). Hence, companies enjoy the ability to fly completely under the regulatory radar. Unless recordkeeping, location mapping, and enforceable abandonment standards are addressed, we can expect to see further damage to the environment and safety risks to frontline communities.

Unfortunately, one doesn't have to look far to see the destruction undetected idle pipelines have already caused to people's lives and their families. In 2017, a 1-inch diameter plastic gas pipeline exploded at the home of Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin in Firestone, Colorado, while they tried to replace a hot water heater. Both Mark and Joey were killed by the explosion in the basement. Mark's wife Erin Martinez and Joey's sister were severely burned. An investigation determined the pipeline was a gathering line that ran from a well its previous owner company reported as properly abandoned in 1999. State regulatory records, however, proved that the well was not properly plugged or abandoned by the company.

Although Colorado leaders stated in 2017 that they would create a pipeline map for the state following this explosion, this has yet to occur. Erin stated that their home was built less than 200 feet from the leaking well that contributed to the explosion. Accurate pipeline status recording, pipeline mapping, accountability from companies, and proper enforcement of existing regulations could have helped prevent this tragedy.

While, as mentioned in our previous blog, PHMSA is working on new gas pipeline rules, they aren't expected to include oversight of all of the hundreds of thousands of miles of gas gathering lines in this country, nor do they apply to gathering lines transporting oil or other hazardous materials.

The following recommendations can further improve the safety of oil and gas gathering lines to avoid creating more risky unabandoned idle or orphaned gathering lines:

• Impose enforceable requirements for companies to report critical gathering line data
• Require greater collaboration between federal agencies (like BLM and PHMSA), states, and local governments on gathering line oversight to improve recordkeeping, transparency and communication
• Establish decommissioning standards and requirements for gathering lines in general, but especially those lines that pose the greatest risks
• Increase public information, awareness, and engagement opportunities about gathering lines to prevent future fatal accidents
• Increase research to determine GHG emissions, particularly methane leaks, and other environmental effects from gathering lines. A recent publication found methane emissions in the Permian Basin from gathering lines "14-52 times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's national estimate."
• When the data allows, creating analyses of gathering line proximity to the places people live, work, learn, and play

These actions, if strongly enforced, would help regulators prioritize communities most at risk of harm from oil and gas gathering lines since they will have more updated mapping information that can help prevent further development near lines, make sure existing lines are properly decommissioned, and make it easier to identify what existing locations may be at risk of an accident.

As more homes are built in rural areas while onshore gathering pipelines remain unidentified, we can expect more accidents impacting people's lives, like the disheartening 2017 explosion at the Martinez home.

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