Pipeline Incidents Are a Daily Occurrence

Introduction

On September 16, 2024, a man drove his car into above-ground hazardous liquids pipeline infrastructure in La Porte, Texas, in the Houston metropolitan area, sending a column of flames hundreds of feet into the air that burned for three days. The pipeline involved was the Justice Pipeline, a natural gas liquids pipeline owned by Energy Transfer Company, which delivers mixed hydrocarbons to a fractionation facility in Mont Belvieu. The driver died in the incident, which was recently determined by the Deer Park Police Department to be an act of suicide, making it a rare case of intentional damage to the nation’s expansive pipeline system.

Pipeline Incidents Are a Daily Occurrence

The dramatic footage of the flames soaring well above any nearby rooftops, trees, or utility towers in Texas was compelling enough to merit attention from national media outlets, but the La Porte incident was one of hundreds of pipeline incidents in 2024. Data downloaded from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) on January 6, 2025, show that there were 530 other pipeline incidents last year, an average of 1.45 incidents per day. However, it is important to note that operators have 30 days to submit their reports, and there may be some additional processing time on PHMSA’s end, because this total only includes five incidents in November, the latest being November 13, 2024. Since 2010, incidents reported to PHMSA average around 628 incidents per year—or 1.7 per day—and recent years have been close to that mark, including 1.73 per day in 2021, 1.72 in 2022, and 1.69 in 2023. Therefore, we can expect that future analyses of 2024 incidents will be more numerous and more impactful in aggregate that what we see here.

Figure 1. Summary of PHMSA incidents by report name from January 1, 2010. This data was downloaded on January 6, 2025, but it is important to note that the 2024 data is likely incomplete. The vast majority are pipeline incidents, but the liquefied natural gas (LNG) report does contain incidents at LNG-related facilities as well.

Human Impacts

All 9,329 incidents since 2010 impacted people and the environment in some way. While each is unique in some respect, we can look at the reports to summarize some of the experiences that are happening around the country. Below are two tables that look at these impacts, summarizing the number of fires, explosions, fatalities, injuries, evacuees, and property damage from these incidents. The first table shows cumulative totals, and the second narrows the scope to reports from 2024 incidents.

Figure 2A. Cumulative key impacts of pipeline incidents between 2010 and 2024.

Figure 2B. Key impacts of pipeline incidents in 2024.

While summaries such as these are useful for understanding trends, they fall short in conveying actual human experiences. However, the PHMSA reports contain a large amount of data, both quantitative and qualitative. With that in mind, let’s explore the “hall of shame” together for each of these categories in order to get a more comprehensive understanding of what is—and in some cases what is not—available on these reports. We will also use this exercise as a “spot audit” to see how accurate the PHMSA reports are, compared to other sources that discuss the incidents.

Hall of Shame: Fatalities

The 531 available incidents from 2024 report a total of 10 fatalities, from nine different incidents, meaning that the Bel Air, Maryland, explosion of Baltimore Gas and Electric Company’s distribution pipeline on August 11th is the only incident reporting multiple people killed. When the data was downloaded more than five months later, very little information was available about this incident. The cause of the incident is listed as “Other incident cause,” the details of which are “unknown,” and even the incident narrative only mentions that, “This incident is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).”

So, what do we know? This report tells us that it was a plastic service line installed in 2006, and that the pipe was underground, and in fact beneath pavement. The report also indicates 15.2 thousand cubic feet (Mcf) of gas was lost, and there were no additional injuries. Only $20 of property damage was reported, a figure which should include all forms of liability, even including the lost gas.  

As it turns out, the NTSB report is available, and paints a different picture than the PHMSA report. On August 10, residents reported the smell of gas. A Baltimore Gas and Electric employee responded, could not find the lead, and referred the repair to a contractor.  Apparently, there was a worker who smelled gas on site at 6:05 a.m. the following morning, just 43 minutes before the explosion that killed two people and injured three others, and completely destroyed the home.

A report from the NTSB confirmed the fatal August 11, 2024, explosion in Bel Air, Maryland, was caused by a natural gas leak. Source: WBAL-TV 11 Baltimore

Residents from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, might be surprised to learn that a fatal explosion from 2024 is not listed here. On March 12, 2024, a home exploded in Crescent Township, killing an elderly couple. However, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission revealed that this house was not connected to a utility line, and that the cause could have been from a propane tank or a private gas well on the property. In many cases, it is not clear whether pipelines in the area are the cause of an incident or not. In our investigation into a series of home explosions in Plum Borough, Pennsylvania, we learned that many incidents go unexplained for years, or in some cases, forever.

Hall of Shame: Injuries

According to PHMSA, 26 injuries were reported from 11 different incidents that occurred in 2024. From looking at one incident from the Fatalities section above, we already know that these numbers are underreported by one incident and three injuries. Nine of these injuries were associated with a single incident on May 28th in Youngstown, Ohio, on an Enbridge Gas Ohio distribution line. In addition to the injuries, one person was reported as killed in the incident, 200 people were evacuated, and $2,055,067 in property damage was reported, including 37.1 Mcf of lost gas. Like the incident in Bel Air, the Youngstown incident is flagged as both a fire and an explosion, and the cause is listed as “Other outside force damage.”

The incident narrative is much more descriptive than the Bel Air incident, informing us that the explosion destroyed the first floor of the Realty Building, occupied by a Chase Bank branch, and caused extensive damage to other parts of the 13-story building. The preliminary investigation revealed that a contractor had cut an inactive steel service line, which apparently let natural gas enter the building. Enbridge Gas noted that the damage numbers were preliminary, and that an NTSB investigation was ongoing.

Aftermath of the May 28, 2024, explosion in Youngstown, Ohio. Photo source: NTSB

The Enbridge report obviously seems much more complete than the one submitted by Baltimore Gas and Electric. The NTSB report generally agrees with the PHMSA account, but does give us more information. The contractor mentioned above was hired by the City of Youngstown to remove and relocate utilities ahead of future road work. A crewmember had been told that a service line he was supposed to remove was inactive, but when he cut into it with a reciprocating saw, it began to whistle loudly and expel gas. The crew evacuated immediately, pulling the fire alarm to alert others in the building, and specifically notified bank employees of the gas leak.  

The explosion occurred just five minutes after the alarm was pulled. Although that did not allow long for an evacuation, even this likely prevented the tragedy from being even worse. If sparks from the reciprocating saw ignited the gas immediately, for example, it’s hard to imagine how the crew might have escaped the basement in time.

Hall of Shame: People Evacuated

The pipeline incident with the largest number of reported evacuees is the September 16, 2024, blast on Energy Transfer company’s Justice Pipeline in La Porte, Texas, mentioned at the beginning of this article. A car crash into the carbon steel pipeline infrastructure resulted in 1,550 people being evacuated and  the death of the driver, with no other reported injuries, according to the PHMSA report. Additionally, 38,793 barrels (about 1.6 million gallons) of liquified petroleum gases were released unintentionally, and another 398 barrels (almost 17,000 gallons) were released intentionally as a part of the incident response, contributing to $3,276,762 in property damage.

In addition to local police discussed above, this incident was investigated by the Railroad Commission of Texas. The account generally agrees with the PHMSA report, although we do learn a few details, such as the fact that the pipeline was operating at 893 pounds per square inch, well under the 1,440 pounds per square inch (psi) limit. We also learn in other reporting of the incident that there were four injuries resulting from the incident in addition to the fatality, giving us another example of under-reporting injuries in this mini-audit.

Hall of Shame: Property Damage

The most significant incident in terms of property damage in 2024 was an oil spill at the Crescent Midstream, LLC tank battery in Raceland, Louisiana, on July 27, 2024. This incident did not involve a fire or explosion, nor any fatalities, or evacuees, but did involve the leak of 590 barrels (24,780 gallons) of crude oil. One of the valves in the secondary containment area had been left open at the time of the spill, allowing the oil to contaminate Bayou Lafourche nearby.

In this case, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) investigated the incident. In this summary, US EPA notes that the spill amount was unknown, but estimated by Crescent to be 820 barrels (34,440 gallons) of oil, an increase over the estimate reported on the PHMSA report. The spill impacted 3.5 miles of the bayou. Nothing else here contradicts the original report, although it would not be surprising if the reclamation costs increased along with the estimates of the spill volume.

Some oil escapes a boom on a cleanup effort for the oil spill on Bayou Lafourche in Raceland, Louisiana. Photo source: US EPA

Mini-Audit Results

So, after an in-depth look at the four sites, how much confidence should we have in the numbers made available on the PHMSA incident reports? Unfortunately, there are a number of inconsistencies shown in just this small sample, which doesn’t inspire confidence in the PHMSA data, which is ultimately self-reported by the various responsible parties.  

The Baltimore Gas & Electric Company incident in Maryland underreported injuries by three, listed property damage as $20 when lives and a house were lost, and the narrative failed to mention that this gas was smelled the day before, and that a gas worker was on scene when the incident occurred. The reporting of the Enbridge Gas explosion in Ohio appears to be factually accurate. The Energy Transfer report of the Texas pipeline explosion failed to mention four injuries associated with the incident. And finally, the Crescent Midstream oil spill in Louisiana failed to update the estimated volume of the leak, leading us to question whether the damages and cleanup costs from the incident are accurately reported.

In all, three of the four incidents that we took a deeper look at significantly misrepresented one or more of the summary metrics that we have available to understand the cumulative impact of these incidents. It is possible that some of these were entered in good faith but the companies failed to update the reports as new information became available.  

It also must be noted that all of the misrepresentations that we encountered were in the same direction—serving to minimize the impacts. Of course, the analysis of four incidents is an extremely small sample size, but it does seem sufficient to say that the accurate representation of events in these PHMSA reports is problematic. When we look at this data in aggregate, the distortion is likely even more pronounced.

Why Are There So Many Incidents in Texas?

One hundred ninety-seven of the 531 incidents (37%) from 2024 that were reported to PHMSA by January 6, 2025, were in Texas, and since 2010, 2,881 of the 9,329 incidents (30%) occurred in the Lone Star State. This seems like a very high percentage for one state, but of course Texas is known for its extensive infrastructure for oil and gas and petrochemical operations, as well. Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Figure 3. Overall, Texas has about 11.3% of the pipeline miles and 27.2% of the tanks that are reported to PHMSA. Note that not all gas gathering lines report data to PHMSA’s inventory.

Overall, Texas had three times the national average of PHMSA incidents in 2024, even when normalized by pipeline mileage. As always, there are a few caveats that are important to mention. When it comes to gas gathering pipelines—of which a whopping 41.7% of reported mileage is in Texas—it is important to note that only a small fraction of this type of pipeline is under PHMSA’s authority, and therefore, the total mileage is drastically under-reported both within Texas and nationally. At one point, there was a statement on the PHMSA pipeline inventory page stating that only about 5% of gathering lines were required to report to the agency. That statement has since been removed, although the mileage has not changed substantially, leading us to suspect that the figure is still somewhere in that ballpark.

Beyond gas gathering lines, the proportion of gas pipelines in Texas is actually well under their incident share of 37% in 2024 or 30% in the larger sample dating from 2010. Texas has “just” 7.2% of the nation’s distribution lines, and 15.8% of the gas transmission lines. On the other hand, many of the hazardous liquids categories have a huge fraction of their pipelines in Texas, including a third of the crude oil pipelines, 34.5% of carbon dioxide lines, and 47% of highly volatile liquids. In Figure 1, we see that 5,521 out of 9,329 (59%) of reported incidents occurred on hazardous liquids routes. With such a huge presence in this state that is almost synonymous with oil and petrochemicals, it does make some sense that the overall number of results in Texas would be elevated, but three times the national average when normalized for mileage still seems inexcusable.

As a sidenote, the Texas Railroad Commission also has a pipeline safety page on their website that contains a graph of incidents per year. There is not a lot of context for the graph, but the number of incidents in the Lone Star State ranged from a low of 8,245 in 2012 to 12,303 in 2022. These numbers exceed the national data of incidents per year from PHMSA by more than an order of magnitude. Some of these incidents could involve those gathering lines that are not subject to PHMSA oversight, but it also seems likely that there is a different event threshold for reporting to the two agencies.

Closing Thoughts

Some other state compliance data is available, such as the 7,812 violations assessed to Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline in Pennsylvania since 2018, which infamously exploded one week into operation. But the only reason that we have this compliance data from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Office of Oil and Gas Management is because it is technically an enormous gathering line, and it therefore falls under their jurisdiction. DEP does have some information about a number of recent projects on their pipeline portal, however.

Aftermath of Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline explosion. Photo by Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2019.

What the Pennsylvania and Texas data sources show above all else is that pipeline incidents are far more prevalent than even the 1.7 incidents per day that the PHMSA data would suggest.  The most recent Texas data from 2023 shows 29.6 incidents per day just in that state, for example. But what seems impossible to answer given the piecemeal regulatory landscape for pipelines is to come up with a definitive national number for how many incidents actually occur.  Additionally, with the operators’ penchant for minimizing outcomes associated with these events, it’s clear that we don’t have a full understanding of the true human and environmental impacts of these incidents, either.  

In a sensible world, a database would be set up where all of these incidents could be found in one place, and an organization named the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration does sound like a strong contender for that role.