GAO pans pipeline safety efforts.(Washington Report)(Government Accountability Office, Office of Pipeline Safety )

LP/Gas, October, 2004 by Pekow, Charles

Efforts to improve pipeline safety have failed to reduce the number of serious accidents, and the Office of Pipeline Safety hasn't established effective goals or measure success, according to the Government Accountability Office (formerly the General Accounting Office).

GAO says it can't measure the organization's safety strategy for lack of data. OPS plans to unveil a policy next year, but "has not adopted key practices for achieving successful performance measurement systems, such as linking measures to goals," GAO reports in Pipeline Safety: Preliminary Information on OPS' Enforcement Activities.

Since 2000, OPS has beefed up enforcement. It increased the number and size of civil penalties. Since then, it averaged 22 fines a year, compared with...

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