This episode of the Pipeliners Podcast features pipeline consultant and former pipeline engineer with Phillips 66, Ed Hetsko, discussing the complexities of pipeline encroachment. The conversation defines what an encroachment is and explores the challenges that arise as urban areas expand around once-rural pipelines. Hetsko also explores the various methods and technologies used to manage these issues.

Managing Pipeline Encroachment Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Pipeline Encroachment is any activity, structure, or improvement—temporary or permanent—on or near a pipeline right-of-way that could adversely affect the pipeline’s integrity, operation, maintenance, or safety.
• Right-of-Way (ROW) is the legal corridor across private or public property where a pipeline is installed and maintained, defined by easement agreements that grant operators access and restrictions on land use.
• Easement Agreement is the legal document granting a pipeline operator the right to install, operate, and maintain a pipeline on another party’s land, including any restrictions related to structures, access, and encroachments.
• Undefined Easement refers to older easement agreements that lack clearly defined width, restrictions, or protective language, making encroachment enforcement significantly more difficult.
• Encroachment Agreement is a negotiated agreement allowing a third party to place structures (e.g., parking lots, roads) over or near a pipeline while protecting the operator’s rights, access, and liability exposure.
• Temporary Encroachment includes short-term activities such as heavy equipment crossings, blasting, grading, geotechnical work, or seismic surveys that may pose immediate but non-permanent risks to the pipeline.
• Permanent Encroachment refers to long-lasting structures such as buildings, roads, parking lots, utilities, fences, ponds, or bridges that alter access, load, or future maintenance conditions for a pipeline.
• Mechanical Protection is physical safeguarding—such as casing, concrete slabs, or barriers—installed to protect pipelines from external loads or excavation damage caused by encroachments.
• Lowering the Line is a mitigation measure where a pipeline is reburied at a deeper depth to maintain adequate cover when encroachments reduce soil protection.
• Extended Casing is protective pipe installed around a pipeline, often at crossings or high-risk areas, to shield it from loads or excavation damage.
• Hold Harmless Clause is a contractual provision stating that the encroaching party bears responsibility for damages or restoration costs if the pipeline operator must access or excavate the pipeline in the future.
• Indemnification is a legal agreement requiring the encroaching party to assume financial responsibility for liabilities, damages, or claims resulting from their encroachment.
• 811 (One Call System) is the nationwide notification system requiring excavators to notify utility operators before digging, serving as a primary early warning mechanism for potential encroachments.
• DIRT Report (Damage Information Reporting Tool) is a Common Ground Alliance data system that tracks excavation damage incidents, highlighting failure to call 811 as a major contributor to third-party damage.
• Common Ground Alliance (CGA) is an industry organization focused on excavation safety and damage prevention across regulated and non-regulated underground infrastructure.
• Third-Party Damage is physical damage to a pipeline caused by external parties, often resulting from excavation or construction activities—frequently linked to encroachment.
• Public Education Program is an operator-led initiative to educate landowners, contractors, and developers about pipeline safety, right-of-way restrictions, and the importance of calling 811.
• Field Operations Personnel are frontline employees responsible for responding to 811 tickets, identifying encroachments, gathering data, and escalating issues as needed.
• Right-of-Way Agent is a specialist responsible for negotiating easements, resolving landowner conflicts, and securing encroachment agreements with developers or property owners.
• Engineering Assessment is the technical evaluation of how an encroachment affects pipeline integrity, stress, access, risk, and future maintenance requirements.
• HCA (High Consequence Area) refers to locations where a pipeline failure could significantly impact populated areas, requiring heightened safety and integrity measures.
• MCA (Moderate Consequence Area) is an area with elevated but lower population risk than an HCA, still influencing risk assessments and mitigation strategies.
• Impact Area is the geographic zone potentially affected by a pipeline release, determined by factors such as product type, pressure, and pipe diameter.
• Shut-Down Valves are isolation valves installed along pipelines to limit release volumes during incidents, with closer spacing often required in urban or high-risk areas.
• Aerial Patrol is the inspection of pipeline rights-of-way using aircraft to identify encroachments, ground disturbance, or other threats to pipeline integrity.
• Ground Patrol is ROW inspection conducted by vehicle or foot, often required when aerial patrols are obstructed by vegetation, fencing, or structures.
• Depth of Cover refers to the vertical distance between the pipeline and the ground surface, which can be reduced by erosion or grading and increase encroachment risk.
• Bell Hole is an excavation dug to expose a localized section of pipe for inspection, repair, or anomaly investigation.
• Anomaly Dig is the excavation performed to inspect and address integrity threats identified through inline inspection or other assessments.
• Satellite Monitoring is the use of remote sensing technology to detect changes along pipeline corridors that may indicate new encroachments or land disturbances.
• Drone Surveillance is the use of unmanned aerial systems to inspect rights-of-way, identify encroachments, and monitor construction activity near pipelines.
• Change Detection Algorithms are analytical tools that compare imagery over time to identify new or altered features near pipeline rights-of-way.
• Building Permits Monitoring is a proactive approach where operators review public permitting data to identify developments near pipelines before construction begins.
• Survey Stakes are physical markers placed during land surveys, often serving as early indicators of planned development near pipelines.
• API (American Petroleum Institute) is an industry body that develops standards and guidance documents for pipeline safety, integrity, and operations.
• API Guidelines for Property Development is an API guidance document providing best practices for managing development activities near pipelines to reduce damage risk.
• PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) is the U.S. federal regulator responsible for pipeline safety regulations and enforcement.
• 49 CFR Part 192 is the federal regulation governing the safety of natural gas pipelines, including integrity management requirements.
• 49 CFR Part 195 is the federal regulation governing hazardous liquid pipelines, including integrity and risk management provisions.
• Integrity Management Program (IMP) is a regulatory framework requiring operators to identify threats, assess risks, and implement mitigation measures for pipelines.
• ASME B31.4 is the standard governing liquid pipeline systems, including guidance on routing and minimizing risks from future development and encroachments.
• ASME B31.8 is the standard governing gas transmission and distribution pipelines, with limited direct reference to encroachment management.
• Geohazard Program is a risk management initiative addressing threats such as erosion, landslides, floods, and river crossings that can expose pipelines.
• Emergency Response refers to coordinated actions taken by operators when pipeline incidents occur, which can be complicated by encroachments limiting access or increasing consequences.
• City Ordinance is a local regulation—such as setback requirements from pipelines—that can provide additional protection when easement language is weak or outdated.
• Critical Infrastructure describes pipelines as essential assets delivering energy products, often located in public spaces and requiring heightened risk and stakeholder management.

Managing Pipeline Encroachment Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat:

Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast, Episode 403,” sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, providers of POEMS, the Pipeline Operations Excellence Management System, operations and compliance software for the pipeline operator to address safety program management, control room management, and field operations. Find out more about POEMS at enersyscorp.com.

[background music]

Announcer: The Pipeliners Podcast, where professionals, bubba geeks, and industry insiders share their knowledge and experience about technology, projects, and pipeline operations. And now, your host, Russell Treat.

Russel:

Thanks for listening to this podcast. We appreciate you taking the time. To show the appreciation, we give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener every episode. This week, our winner is Kevin Gifford with Emerson. To learn how you can win this prize, stick around until the end of the episode.

This week, Ed Hetsko, a pipeline consultant and former pipeline engineer with Phillips 66, is going to talk to us about managing pipeline encroachment. Ed, welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast.”

Ed Hetsko: Thanks for having me, Russell. Appreciate it.

Russel: I’m glad to have you here. As I often do, I’d like to start with a little introduction. If you would tell us a little bit about your background, and what you’re doing these days, and how you got into managing pipeline encroachments.

Ed: I’m from Corpus Christi, so I’ve always been around the energy industry. I went to Texas A&M for mechanical engineering. Did a summer internship with Transco Pipeline, so got some gas pipeline experience. That was a great summer job. That helped get my foot in the door with Phillips Pipeline in the mid-80s during the…

Russel:

We had a bust about that time. That’s probably what you’re talking about. There was a pretty big…Because I graduated from A&M in 1980, and I went into the Air Force, and all my buddies were going to work in the energy business.

Boy, what I remember is they were all making big money, and wearing fancy watches, and driving fancy cars, and I was struggling to make a living in the Air Force. That all flipped around by 1985.

Ed:

Yeah, by ’85, when I graduated, that’s what it was. Luckily, I had that summer experience, got my foot in the door. I think they had a hiring freeze right after I came in for a few years.

I started with Phillips Pipeline, which is liquid pipeline operations and terminals. Did the first couple of roles as an area engineer in the field, so got a lot of background in terminal operations, tanks, truck racks, things like that.

Then had another role in the Texas Panhandle. Got a lot of pipeline operations and maintenance, gathering systems, just all the liquid products, chemicals, crude, refined products. Got a good, round experience in the field for a few years. Then I got to go into the headquarters and technical services for the pipeline.

Then there was just a few of us handling all of the programs we had, so you had to get good quick at whatever was assigned, whether it was corrosion, pipeline hydrotesting, tanks, encroachments, which was a lot of emergency response support because we had a few more incidents back in those days. Then in your spare time, you did projects too, which took most of your time.

Russel: [laughs]

Russel: That sounds like a pretty typical pipeline career path, man. Whatever fires up, that’s the one you’re going to dump on.

Ed:

That’s what it was. After I came out of the headquarters, I had a few roles managing the field operations. That was great experience too. I was well prepared for that. I worked some Gulf Coast and Central Texas pipelines.

Then got to go up to Kansas City for a while. Then got a great assignment that was almost a vacation in Spokane for four years. I love that. I learned a lot in the Northwest about operations in a Heritage Conoco area. That was a fun assignment there.

Russel: How’d you get involved with encroachment?

Ed:

I got involved a little bit in the Panhandle, but mostly in tech services the first time. Then the Gulf Coast, these other roles with the Gulf Coast.

In Kansas City, I didn’t have a division engineer, so I was managing the area and handling a busy pipeline quarter through Johnson County, just was continuous encroachments there. Between Gulf Coast and Kansas city, it was half my job a lot of times just managing encroachments.

Russel:

Encroachment is one of those things that it’s really dependent on where your pipeline’s located and what’s going on around it. I used to own a property, we had a little above-ground pipeline training facility for a number of years. We were right adjacent to Kinder Morgan, so I got to know those guys quite well.

One of the biggest challenges for them was encroachments because all of their pipelines that used to be out in the country 40, 50 years ago when they built them were all surrounded by the city of Houston. Everybody sees that green space behind their back fence and they think that’s available for them to do stuff with.

Ed:

That’s exactly right. When these lines were first built, it was wide open. You’re avoiding encroachments or you’re avoiding congested areas, and then the cities grow around you. Then it’s just continuous.

The fast-growing metro areas were most of the work. There are other areas that are slow, and they don’t even have to deal with one a year. Whereas in around Houston, Kansas City, and a lot of other cities where pipelines…

[crosstalk]

Russel: It’s all day, every day.

Ed: It’s all day. It’s constant battle.

Russel: Yeah. Just for the listeners that maybe don’t know — I’m assuming — how would you define an encroachment?

Ed:

Yeah, good starting question there. To us, an encroachment is a new structure or improvement that could adversely affect the pipeline. Something either on the right-of-way, adjacent to. It could be a crossing. It could be just something nearby. It could adversely affect us in the future.

Some examples. There’s temporary encroachments, like heavy equipment crossing, or somebody blasting or doing geoseismic work, or could be changing the grade on it. That’s more of a temporary encroachment.

Could be something permanent, like pipelines or utilities crossing us, parking lots, decks, fences, up to roads and bridges, ponds, things like that. Anything around us that could affect us in the future, during construction…

Russel: You would also look at vegetation that way, too, like tree [indecipherable] and that sort of thing?

Ed: Right. Trees, shrubs, anything being planted along the right of way that would obscure the right of way.

Russel: Or, just growing naturally out of the nearby woods, right?

Ed: Right.

Russel: All of that would be. It’s basically anything that’s in the pipeline right-of-way that shouldn’t be there.

Ed: Correct. That is true.

Russel: Basically, in an ideal world, the only thing we have in the pipeline right-of-way is grass.

Ed: [laughs]

Ed:

Ideally. That’s our ideal world. When you’re laying a new line cross-country and have a nice 50-foot right of way, that’s perfect with all kinds of restrictions.

That’s not what we’re always dealing with. We have a lot of easements that are not so strong or don’t have the strong language in them — old easements, maybe undefined easements. They make managing encroachments a lot more challenging.

Russel: Maybe the better thing to ask is — you’re bringing up the issue of the nature of the easement agreements and the age of the easement agreements and how that impacts things — how do you define what the right-of-way is? Because without having a definition of the right-of-way, you can’t define an encroachment, right?

Ed:

Right. Yeah. The right of way, that’s our right to be there by some kind of agreement across somebody else’s property. Typically, it’s an easement agreement that was purchased when the line was constructed. It gives us the right to be there, to come in and maintain it.

As years went by, those agreements have gotten progressively better. They should be really good by now because we’ve got a lot of experience dealing with encroachments.

Early on, they weren’t very restrictive. They were undefined. You didn’t have any restrictions, any distances around us. It was really tough to manage encroachments because we had no teeth in our easement agreements to keep them off.

Nowadays, we’ll have them defined. I’ve seen 30, 50, 60-foot widths with restrictions of structures, temporary and permanent, from staying on there. It’s much easier to manage those encroachments when a new landowner comes in or a developer and wants to build all around the pipeline.

Russel:

That helps me understand the challenge. If I’m a pipeline operator and I have a line that’s put in 50-plus years ago, and when it was put in, it was in the country, and I was buying an easement from a farmer or a rancher, and I wrote an agreement presuming that would always be the case…

And now I come back and I get an agreement, and I’ve got the cities grown up around it, that starts to become a challenge. Because if I don’t have any teeth in those agreements, how do I enforce?

Ed:

That is true. Then it becomes a negotiating game with the developer. You have strength in there if they’re wanting to put a road across you or do something too close that you think is unsafe, that would be conflicting with your encroachment guidelines.

You can try to get a defined width while you’re at it, define a width on the easement, and allow them to put a road across. It just depends on what they want planning. Every encroachment project is, when it looks a large one like this, it’s unique.

It takes a lot of data gathering, engineering assessment, and negotiation with the encroaching party and your right-of-way agent to try to figure out how we can move forward on this and get an agreement.

Russel:

It’s interesting because when we teed up this episode, I was thinking more about people doing things on the right-of-way they shouldn’t be doing, or homeowners moving fence lines and things like that.

What you’re talking about here is really something different, which is people who have needs to cross the right-of-way or be near the right-of-way because they’re building something new, and those have to be addressed.

Ed:

Yes. Probably the majority of the encroachments are small things that you’re thinking of, maybe a pole or a small building or a utility crossing, and you have spacing guidelines that can meet those, and it doesn’t get any further beyond documentation.

But there is a small number that’ll come out that’ll be these major projects that have greater effect on you, like a development, or a highway crossing, or a big drainage project, or something that could require you to lower your line or adjust it some other way, either reroute it or put mechanical protection or extended casing or something like that. It could turn into a big project quite often.

Russel: It’s simple things like if I’ve got a right away and somebody’s building a Walmart or something and they want to put their parking lot over the right of way. I know, in Houston, that that’s a common challenge.

Ed:

Yes, we’ve had a lot of parking lots put on us. In the process, usually, for something like that, you’ll get an encroachment agreement, we’ll call it so.

Not every project will need that, but when they’re putting a parking lot over you, you want to get an agreement that states our rights, that allows them to do it, that has them uncovered to try to get four feet, or pay us for us to lower it.

Then you want some hold harmless in there to say, “If we got to come back and dig up this line, we’re not going to pay you to replace your parking lot because you encroached on us in the first place.”

Get them to sign off on that, get indemnifications and everything else. Every company has their own agreement, but those are some of the basics in encroachment.

Russel: What are some of the current methods and approaches for managing the whole encroachment process? Maybe a way to ask that is, where does that function typically exist within the pipeline organization?

Ed:

Usually, it starts, for most of it, in the field. Encroachments tie into so many other existing programs, you don’t really think about it. The first one’s just 811. Just getting those one calls done. The people responding to that, they’re your first line.

They need to have the personality to stop encroachments, to gather data and information, and get that to the right person if it escalates or if there’s any conflicts. Most of the work is done right there.

Also, if they need to escalate the issue, it needs to go to, usually, the field engineer, or it can go into the technical support engineers in the headquarters that are dealing with them all over the place if it gets to be major. Plus, you’ll have your right-of-way agents helping with agreements or any conflicts if it turns into…

If the landowner or encroaching party doesn’t want to, say, play ball and follow your agreements and requirements, then you’ve got to get the right-of-way agent in to negotiate.

There’s no substitute for having good right-of-way agents on your side because there should be a good negotiator. That helps you a lot. I’ve seen some that are really good in the past, plus some that don’t push back very hard.

I’d rather have those guys that are hard negotiators trying to not taking anything from developers and encroaching parties at first blush and pushing back on them.

Russel: I always am a bit amazed by the diversity of skills we ask of our field operations folks. It’s the number of things they have to have a fairly solid and deep knowledge of. And the ability to interact with the public in a way that is professional and firm, but polite and kind. [laughs] That’s not an easy thing to do, man.

Ed:

That is not. Usually, dealing with the landowner, this is one of the most sensitive topics because they want to enjoy their land, and they think you’re deep underground. “Anything I put up here is not going to bother you.”

They’re not aware that there’s a thousand pounds of pressure on the propane line down there, or that maybe you don’t have, but three feet of cover because there’s been erosion or some problem, or that you got to get in there and dig a bell hole and do an anomaly dig someday or do a reroute.

They really don’t think of those things. They think it’s OK to put almost anything up to or on you without a problem because you’re buried.

Russel: Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Ed: Right.

Russel:

Because of some of the work I did for the facility that I owned, and we had pipeline right-of-ways on three sides of that facility. We were pretty much surrounded, and they were 20, 30 feet from our fence lines.

It was interesting. Anytime we wanted to do anything, before I did anything, I walked over and I talked to the area superintendent, said, “Hey, we’re thinking about we need to do this. I want to know if you’re worried about it and what that worry is.”

Just the fact that we would have that conversation and spoke pipeline made it a whole lot easier because we understood the risk they’re trying to manage, and we’re trying to work with them to get done what we needed to get done, but it was always interesting.

[laughter]

Russel: I just said that. It was always interesting.

Ed: We wish all the landowners were like that. [laughs]

Russel: Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works.

Ed: It is not.

Russel:

How do you frame up risk around managing encroachment? Let me give a little context for this question. What I’m trying to do here is help people that maybe don’t fully understand this issue. There’s a number of things that would impact that. One is, am I in an area that’s rural or city? That’s going to be a risk element, for sure. HCA/MCA kind of stuff.

I would think another would be, what product am I carrying, how big’s the line, and what pressure I’m operating at? Because that gets into impact areas and all that kind of stuff, if I were to have an incident.

Then I would think the other thing would be just what’s the level of change that’s generally occurring in the area that my pipeline lays in? Have I got that framed up correctly?

Ed:

Yeah. All of those are very important considerations when we’re looking at any activity around the line, because we’re looking at anything that could damage or overstress the line, and the size, the pressure, the product, the impact, all works into that.

Anything that could increase our risk of future damage, which would be other activities coming in there. Then we’re looking at the future maintenance of the line. Are you going to make it more difficult, or are we going to have access to our line because of these encroachments around here?

Are we going to require us to remove or damage the encroachment? If the uncover could be higher-risk excavation and increases the risk of us doing anything on our line. Those things might not come around for a while, but eventually they will. You’re eventually going to have to dig up somewhere.

If you let those encroachments go everywhere, too close to the line, you’re causing a lot of trouble in the future.

Russel:

If you have something like an apartment building that’s built next to your property, then your whole risk profile changes because you’ve got to deal with high-consequence areas. Now I’ve got to start looking at, how do I isolate the line around this kind of thing?

In a liquid line, typically, you’d have shut-down valves every 10 to 20 miles. That’d be pretty typical. If I’m in a city, I might have them every couple of miles. Every mile.

Ed: Yeah. True.

Russel: That adds cost. Not just to install that, but you got to maintain all that. You got to go out and do your point-to-points, and your verifications, and all that other stuff, which increases your operating costs.

Ed: Yes. Finding the sites for aboveground valves or below-ground valves getting…

Russel: I don’t imagine that any of those people building those assets are paying a fee to the pipeline company to offset those costs.

Ed:

No. I don’t imagine that.

[laughter]

Russel: If somebody could figure out how to make that happen, I’m sure there’d be a lot of operators sign up for that deal.

Ed:

Yeah, and you touched on one other. One was the ability to patrol the right-of-way. If you let encroachments get up, the trees, fences, especially six-foot wood fences, you’re restricting your chance of doing aerial patrol.

Fences says you got to patrol it. Ideally, you catch it all with a airplane going over the top. If they can’t, then you’re going to have to go do it up by car or by foot and patrol those as required a couple of times a month by law. It increases your operating cost, increases the chance of third-party damage with all that clutter around the line where you can’t patrol it.

Russel: No, I get it. What are some of the biggest challenges related to encroachments? We’ve talked about a few, which is just development and cities growing and all that. What are some of the other things that are big challenges for managing encroachment?

Ed: First one, like I said, probably 811. You had the 811 DIRT Report on recently, so you had…

Russel: I did, yeah.

Ed:

a glimpse of that data. Still educating those people. It’s the homeowners, the small contractors around us, that could cause…besides third-party damage, they could have assets put in before we even know if we don’t watch out. That’s one of the first challenge that we have.

I guess the next one might be finding these encroachments after they’re put in. We’re not driving every mile of pipeline, except a couple of times a year for corrosion.

In the busy areas, you’re doing it. You’re hitting those areas quite a bit. There could be new technology there to help find those encroachments, whether it’s satellite or drone, and picking up change in the mapping along the pipeline.

Catching encroachments after they’re done and then getting those addressed. It’s a lot harder. You want to find them before they’ve been there too long. The longer they’re there, the harder it’s going to be for you to get rid of them.

Russel: Yeah. I had a, I won’t name the operator, but I was working with a liquids operator. They had an encroachment issue where somebody was doing approved construction adjacent to the pipeline right of way, and somebody got into their work site at night and fired up an excavator and just started digging holes, playing around, and hit the pipeline.

Ed: [winces]

Ed: I think I remember that one.

Russel:

The nature of encroachment is the quicker I can find it, the quicker I can address it, the more I lower my risk. Which goes to my next question. How are people managing this risk?

What kind of approaches are people taking? You’ve talked about doing airplanes, you’ve talked about doing ground surveys either by truck or by foot, but what other kinds of things are people doing to manage encroachments, just to identify them?

Ed:

One of them would be just the public education program, getting the word out to the landowners along the route to giving them a brochure, you should have some kind of encroachment guidelines brochure to hand out to educate them and everybody around there. Tell them to call 811, because really, before they start work, anybody should be calling 811.

A lot of times, that’s our first notice that something’s going on out there. I’d say the education of people around there. Trying to get that in the hands of developers and contractors, too. That’s been an ongoing program for a long time.

Russel: Yeah, we still got a long ways to go there. I had this conversation, and you mentioned it, listening to it with Sarah Magruder Lyle of the Common Ground Alliance, and the DIRT Report. Failure to call 811 is still one of the biggest issues around damage.

Ed:

Yeah. I’d say one other challenge that we have in the industry would be having good process and procedures to handle encroachments, and having some consistent training to apply that process. With employee turnover, especially in certain jobs, engineering jobs turnover more than field jobs.

The field’s usually pretty solid, but some of those other roles behind them that are supporting them. Just making sure that’s they’re trained on that part of their job. Like we were saying, there’s so much, they’re doing so many things, so many other parts of that role that encroachment is just a small part of it sometimes.

They still need to know when to get an agreement, how to negotiate with landowners or developers, how to keep the projects going. There’s so many things there that if you let that slide, it could be too late and things could get past you. The employee side is important in companies these days, of course.

Russel: Without a doubt. What about the use of satellite? I know there are some folks that are doing satellite surveys of pipeline right of ways and identifying potential encroachments. Are you seeing operators adopt that as an approach?

Ed:

I haven’t talked to anybody that’s using that yet. There could be some out there, but I didn’t get the last part of my job. I’m retired from Phillips now after 32 years. At the time I left, we weren’t doing satellite yet.

We’re using it for some other things like the geo hazards, but not quite for this yet, until the cost was coming down. I’ve heard the cost has come way down, so there could be people using it by now.

Russel:

I know of some that are, that’s why I’m asking the question. The neat thing about the…Of course, you can do this with airplanes as well. It becomes more of a cost issue and a trade-off. Over the years, I’ve done some podcasts on this. The difference is, what is the size of an individual pixel in the camera that you’re using? Is it a square inch, square foot, square yard?

The higher up you are, the larger the pixel tends to be, so the harder it is to identify things, but the birds and the cameras are continuing to get better and the price points are continuing to get lower.

There are people using this because there’s some value. I can get a fly-over once a week or even once a day if I need it, and they can run a big algorithm. They can say, “OK, here’s what’s different, and of those things that are different, here’s the things we think you need to look at,” which that, by itself, is huge.

Ed: That is huge. That would be a huge step in encroachment management from the past.

Russel:

Rather than having to look at all the line, you just have to go look at the things that are different. That’s huge. You’ve mentioned training. We’ve talked a bit about the various people that are involved. Frankly, anybody who’s close to the asset needs to understand encroachments. That’s one of my key takeaways of this conversation.

What other actions or programs can operators put in place to proactively manage encroachment? I’m thinking of a couple of things. I’ll just throw them out here. I don’t know if anybody does this or if it even makes sense, but I could monitor building permits.

By monitoring building permits, and I would assume that there’s some public domain databases that I could query and compare to my pipeline and say, “Hey, here’s some building permits that are adjacent to my pipeline. I need to make sure these guys are taking us into consideration.”

Ed: That would be a huge step to do that. That would be a good one. Probably the closest I’ve seen to that is when the personnel are driving the right of way, they’re looking out for any survey stakes or surveyors, because that’s one of the first things that they’ll do before getting permits or doing plats. They jump on those surveyors right away. They’re doing their job right.

Russel: Who are you doing the survey for? What’s the purpose of the survey?” Blah, blah, blah.

Ed: Contact information.”

Russel: That makes perfect sense.

Ed: Who’s the engineering company?” Usually, the engineering company has them out there. That’s one of the biggest ones.

Russel: That makes a lot of sense. Be like, “Maybe I could fly a drone and get a drone to look for survey stakes,” right?

Ed: [laughs]

Ed: Maybe talk to some survey companies, see if they’re going to be around there.

Russel: That’s right. There’s got to be some API standard for managing encroachment. If there’s not, there ought to be. What kind of stuff do you guys use for this?

Ed:

API has a good document called Guidelines for Property Development just about encroachments, how to protect and reduce the risk of damage to pipelines. I’ve seen Chevron, Marathon, Enterprise. There’s some good documents out there that they have that are easy to find that use that template.

Of course, it’s an API document, so it’s a little hard to get a hold of unless you’re an API member. You can see these other companies that have used that, adopted that, have some great documentation on that for API.

Just digging back into 192 and 195, it’s briefly mentioned in the IMP section about documenting and analyzing threats. Not a lot of real requirements. That does make it tough sometimes in dealing with encroaching parties because you got to use other parts of the code to try to keep them off the line because encroachments aren’t specifically mentioned very much.

ASME B31.4 probably has a little more on it because it does mention when you’re doing construction to pick a route to minimize the hazards of future development or encroachments for the right of way. They do mention it. Nothing in 31.8 on that, but 31.4, the liquid code has it.

Then also in maintenance, they talk about preventing encroachments above and below the ground and patrolling for activities that can cause encroachments. They do have guidance in there.

That’s about all I’ve seen. There’s nothing with a lot of teeth in it. It’s why we don’t get a lot of attention with encroachments, but it does tie into so many programs from one call, line locating, excavation safety, down to third-party damage, public education, and emergency response if it gets really bad.

Russel:

I know, in my conversation with the Common Ground Alliance, they mentioned that a lot of the infrastructure they’re working to protect is not regulated — fiber, water, sewer, those sorts of things. The fact that pipelines are regulated is helpful to them.

I wonder if there’d be interest or appetite in our industry to ask PHMSA to put some additional regulations in place that would support our ability to protect our right of way.

Ed:

That would be a good idea if that would be an issue that would come up to them, because usually it takes a major incident to get a lot of action, like the geohazard program, the river program.

Actually, if you think about some of the incidents, maybe not the root cause, but there’s usually a number of contributing factors. Sometimes an encroachment would be a contributing factor to that incident.

I can think of a few offhand. A really big one there was in Bellingham. That encroachment caused that or contributed to that, even though y’all were talking about San Jacinto floods with Jeff Berry. They changed the use of the right of way all around those lines, digging sand pits in a floodplain that directly caused the washouts that caused that damage.

Maybe there’s other things we could have done, in hindsight, but encroachment there was a contributing factor to those lines being exposed, because only where the sand pits were is where we were exposed. There’s probably plenty of other ones if I really thought about it on where encroachment…

Russel: It’s interesting, but you never really, or rarely, at least in my experience, do you see an incident that’s directly an issue of encroachment.

Ed:

No, they’ll call it third-party damage or something, but third-party damage is…

[crosstalk]

Russel: It is an encroachment.

Ed: Yes. [laughs]

Russel: It is an encroachment. Interesting. A couple of my takeaways from this conversation. One, encroachments is a very complex, very diverse subject because there’s a lot of things that could be an encroachment. Every one of those things that could be an encroachment requires a different strategy or set of resources to manage the encroachment.

Ed: True.

Russel: It affects everything we do as pipeliners. That’s the big one.

Ed: Yes, it is. We’re in the public. We don’t operate inside the fence. We’re out in the public. Everywhere out there is a chance for an encroachment.

Russel:

That’s one of the things I say a lot about being a pipeliner and what it means to call yourself a pipeliner, is we’re managing critical infrastructure.

The difference between us and most other people that are managing critical infrastructures are running through people’s backyards. That means we have a different level of fiduciary responsibility and different complexity in managing our risk.

Ed: Very true.

Russel: Look, I really appreciate your time. Before we wrap up, maybe we could talk a little bit about what you think the long term is. What are some of the things that maybe industry ought to be looking at or considering as a mechanism for more effectively managing encroachment?

Ed:

A few things, probably. I don’t want to keep echoing 811 and CGA, but getting involved with those and improving that program, giving them any support they need, that’s definitely top of the list.

Depending on the size of the company and number of assets, they may have a different encroachment management program, but really look at that to see if that’s accomplishing everything you need it to. Do you have the right procedures, people, and training in place to have a strong encroachment management program?

Especially if you’re in any of the congested areas that have a lot of development, having a good encroachment guideline document like some of the companies I mentioned, having that ready to give away, planning for a giveaway in the field, having it for excavation safety training or for anybody, those surveyors you catch along the right of way, getting that out in the hands of people.

That one’s important. Don’t just drive by and ignore something going on. You get out there and you start talking to people when you see any activity around the line.

Then probably another one that might be easier to do these days, since pipeline industry has received a lot of attention, and that would be lobbying the city or local officials to have some stronger development guidelines in place for pipelines, around pipelines, because there is several cities around the country.

The example I can give is the city of Friendswood. They’ve got a city ordinance that says no structure will be built within 50 feet of a pipeline, because they realized in the ’90s, they grew all around these 20 or so pipelines running through the city. They put this ordinance in place. It helps us a ton because we don’t have a very good easement.

Then somebody comes in with a business, maybe we just have a parking lot on us instead of a building 10 feet away, which might be allowed. Now they’ve got to stay 50 feet away. That’s a huge help.

That was something we were trying to accomplish back then, but it’s so hard to do. I think with the attention on pipelines now, getting these cities and anybody that’s approving plots for subdivisions, trying to get them to strengthen their requirements to keep structures away from pipelines.

Russel: Yeah. Particularly preexisting.

Ed: Yes.

Russel:

Yeah. No, I think all that’s good. Being a technologist, always I’m thinking about what are some cool things you could do with technology.

I wonder if there’d be a way to track cell phones inside of the right of way and put a notification on the cell phone. “You’re inside of a pipeline right-of-way. Go here for more information.” That sort of thing. There’s probably some opportunities for doing things like that that could add some real value.

Ed:

Yeah. I’m sure some of those bright, young engineers in the company can come up with some good ideas like that. They’re always coming up with great ideas on new technology before I left the company, so I’m sure…

[crosstalk]

Russel:

Some person’s working in a garage right now trying to figure that out.

[laughter]

Ed: Yes.

Russel:

Anyways, look, and I really appreciate your time. This has been great. I’ve certainly learned some stuff about encroachment that I didn’t really think about, although I’ve had some involvement with it personally. I certainly I’m a little bit convicted of my lack of knowledge.

[laughter]

Russel: Anyways, this has been good. I appreciate your time.

Ed: Enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on. Thanks, Russel.

Russel:

I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast and our conversation with Ed. Just a reminder, before you go, you should register to win our customized Pipeliners Podcast YETI tumbler. It’s easier than you think. Simply visit pipelinepodcastnetwork.com/win and enter yourself in the drawing.

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Russel:

If you have ideas, questions, or topics you’d be interested in hearing about, please let me know either on the Contact Us page at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com, or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.

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