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U.S. Government Proposes New Safety Regulation for CO₂ Pipelines
17th January 2025
On January 15, 2025, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for CO₂ pipelines. Once finalized, the new rules will enhance regulatory certainty for project developers, ensuring compliance with the existing safety framework for the nation’s CO₂ pipelines, aligning with accelerating the growth of CCS projects and infrastructure. The NPRM builds PHMSA’s 2022 updated safety requirements and multi-year investigation into the rare CO₂ leak in Satartia, Mississippi, in 2020. The new proposed rules strengthen standards for transporting fluid-phase CO₂ and the first-ever standards for transporting gaseous-state CO₂.
The DOT highlights the following proposed requirements for CO₂ transportation pipelines:
- Gas-phase CO₂: Requirements for design, installation, operation, maintenance, and reporting
- Different phases of CO₂: New requirements for pipeline operators to follow when converting existing pipelines to transport CO₂
- Emergency response: Requirements for CO₂ pipeline operators to provide training and CO₂-detection equipment to local first responders
- Emergency communication: Requirements for emergency communications with the public
- Protection: Requirements for more detailed vapor dispersion analyses
Once the official NPRM is published in the Federal Register, the public may submit comments within 60 days.