This episode of the Pipeliners Podcast welcomes back Keith Coyle, now serving as Chief Counsel at PHMSA, to discuss his new role and the agency’s current priorities. The conversation highlights leadership changes within PHMSA, the administration’s push for greater efficiency and impact, and the agency’s updated approach to rulemaking, enforcement, and safety priorities. Listeners get a high-level view of how PHMSA is focusing its efforts to drive meaningful improvements in pipeline safety.

Episode 406: PHMSA’s Focus on Safety Impact with Keith Coyle Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Keith Coyle is the Chief Counsel for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
  • PHMSA (Pipeline And Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) protects people and the environment by advancing the safe transportation of energy and other hazardous materials that are essential to our daily lives. To do this, the agency establishes national policy, sets and enforces standards, educates, and conducts research to prevent incidents. They prepare the public and first responders to reduce consequences if an incident does occur.
  • DOT (Department of Transportation) is a cabinet-level agency of the federal government responsible for helping maintain and develop the nation’s transportation systems and infrastructure.
• OPS (Office of Pipeline Safety) – A division within PHMSA that manages pipeline safety regulations, inspections, and enforcement.
• Advisory Bulletin – Formal communications from PHMSA used to inform industry stakeholders of agency priorities, policies, or safety expectations.
• Rulemaking – The regulatory process where PHMSA proposes, revises, or finalizes pipeline safety regulations.
• ANPRM (Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) – A preliminary request for public input on potential regulatory changes before a proposed rule is drafted.
• Standards Incorporated by Reference (IBR) – Industry consensus standards (e.g., for pipeline design, testing, or operation) that PHMSA formally adopts into federal regulation.
• Enforcement Process – PHMSA’s procedures for investigating potential violations of pipeline safety regulations and applying penalties or corrective actions.
• Civil Penalty Worksheet – A structured tool PHMSA uses to calculate consistent fines and penalties for violations of safety regulations.
• Due Process – The legal principle that enforcement actions must be fair, transparent, and consistent with the rules in effect at the time of the alleged violation.
• Enforcement Priorities – Specific focus areas identified by PHMSA where inspection and enforcement resources will be directed to maximize safety outcomes.
• boost clean energy, reduce healthcare costs, and increase tax revenues.
• HCA (High-Consequence Areas) are defined by PHMSA as a potential impact zone that contains 20 or more structures intended for human occupancy or an identified site. PHMSA identifies how pipeline operators must identify, prioritize, assess, evaluate, repair, and validate the integrity of gas transmission pipelines that could, in the event of a leak or failure, affect HCAs.
• MCA (Moderate-Consequence Area) – Pipeline segments in areas with moderate population or exposure, subject to additional safety requirements similar to those in HCAs.
• Integrity Management (IM) – A regulatory framework requiring operators to assess, evaluate, and mitigate risks to pipelines in HCAs and MCAs.
• Control Room Management is regulated by PHMSA under 49 CFR Parts 192 and 195 for the transport of gas and hazardous liquid pipelines, respectively. PHMSA’s pipeline safety regulations prescribe safety requirements for controllers, control rooms, and SCADA systems used to remotely monitor and control pipeline operations.
• Leak Detection – Systems and processes operators must maintain to identify and respond to pipeline leaks promptly.
• Damage Prevention – Regulatory requirements and industry programs (such as 811 call-before-you-dig) aimed at preventing excavation damage to pipelines.

Episode 406: PHMSA’s Focus on Safety Impact with Keith Coyle Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat:

Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast, Episode 406,” sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, providers of POEMS, the Pipeline Operations Excellence Management System, operations and compliance software for pipeline operators 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 the Pipeliners Podcast. I appreciate you taking the time. To show that appreciation, we give away a YETI tumbler to one listener every episode. This week, the winner is Charles Costello with DNV. Congratulations, Charles, your YETI is on its way. To learn how you can win this prize, stick around till the end of the episode.

This week, Keith Coyle is returning to the podcast in a new role and is going to be talking to us about PHMSA’s focus on pipeline safety impact. Mr. Keith Coyle, I’m so excited to have you back on the Pipeliners Podcast.

Keith Coyle:

Thank you for having me. That makes three of us — me, you, and maybe my mom — is excited that I’m back on the podcast. I think she’s an avid listener. She’s probably not, but I’m calling her out on that.

No, I’m really happy to be back on the show. I miss our conversations. I’m glad that the folks in the building said it was OK for me to set this up and have a little chat.

Russel: Speaking of that, for those that don’t know, the listeners, Keith is in a rather different role these days. When we were talking to him before, he was a principal at Babst Calland as a pipeline attorney. Keith, why don’t you tell us what you’re up to these days?

Keith:

I am currently the new chief counsel over at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA. The President was gracious enough to allow me to come in and take on this position.

It’s been a great experience for me. I was at a point in my career where it felt like I could handle the job. It’s been a pretty significant undertaking for me personally and professionally.

Been here for, going on seven months. Sometimes it feels like seven years. The days are long, but it’s been extremely rewarding. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. We’ve got a really good team of people here over at the agency.

It’s been really good to come in with the perspective that I have from the outside. I was also a younger, wiser version of myself as a staff attorney here many years ago, but it’s been good to come back with the experience that I’ve had working on the issues on the outside.

I would be remiss if I did not thank my wife and family for having the grace and patience to let me take on this job. One of the things that they usually don’t talk about is positions like this, it’s not just the person who’s serving in the position. It’s the other people around them that allow them to do it.

I have three little girls, so I don’t get to see as much as I want to, but it’s been really rewarding and I’m grateful for the opportunity.

Russel:

I didn’t expect this to happen, but I’m getting a little emotional as I’m listening to you talk.

Anybody who’s done federal service, whether that’s in the military or even any kind of public service where you have a passion for what you’re doing, realize that the net effect of it is you get paid a lot less money for a lot more work, and your family and your team suffer along with you. In return, you maybe get to make some positive impact.

Keith:

That’s how I try to approach the job. I’ve been given this opportunity, I want to make the most out of it. Other people are making a lot of sacrifices so I can be here, so I want to do some good.

Hopefully, in the first couple of months here, I’ve been able to do a little bit of that, and maybe, with some grace, I’ll have a few more months to do some more. That’s how I come at the job each day.

Like I said, it’s been a wonderful experience. I have the privilege of working with some very smart and capable people throughout the department and within PHMSA. Every day has been a privilege. It’s just a very rewarding job.

Russel: You have an opportunity to make a real difference. You can leave your thumbprints on things, which is awesome. Hey, so there’s a new sheriff in town. We have a new administration.

Keith: We do.

Russel:

Whenever there’s a new administration, there’s new direction. There’s been a lot of changes at PHMSA. There’s a few people who have been around a long time and who have had a big impact over many, many years, people like Alan Mayberry, who have retired and moved on.

Tell us a little bit about just the overall PHMSA team, like what’s going on. You guys have had a lot of change in the agency.

Keith:

We have a really great and experienced political team that the President has put in place. We have our PHMSA nominee, Paul Roberti. We expect him to be over here, hopefully, pretty soon. Paul previously served in my job during the first Trump administration. Now he’s back to serve as the Administrator.

We have Ben Kochman. He’s the Deputy Administrator. Ben also previously served in PHMSA during the first Trump administration as the Director of Government and Public Affairs. He’s got a ton of experience in the gas industry. He was instrumental in helping me get this position.

Then we have Emily Wong, who’s our current Director of Government and Public Affairs. She also served in the first Trump administration, in the Secretary’s office, in a senior advisor role, and has extensive experience in the oil and gas industry. In terms of the political appointees that we have at the top of PHMSA, I couldn’t be happier with the team.

By happenstance, we all get along really well. Ben and I had a personal relationship before I took this job. Emily and I have gotten along really well. I know her and Paul. The interactions have been great. In terms of the experience and just having people in place who really get along and love the work, we’re blessed to have that.

We have had some turnover in personnel. At the senior executive level, we’ve had some really great people who’ve decided to move on and do other things. Wish all of those folks the best.

One of the things that I’ve been really impressed with is we’ve had people internally who have stepped up into each of those positions and taken on the role. I feel like we haven’t missed a beat.

Linda Daugherty is currently serving in Alan’s role. Then we have folks who stepped up to serve in other positions beneath Linda. Same thing on our hazmat side. We have Bill Quaid, who stepped up to take one of those roles, and some other folks within his team.

I’ve just been really impressed by the willingness of other people within the agency to take on those roles and to really be able to do them in a way that you don’t even notice, really. You don’t want to see those experienced people go, but it’s great to have a bench where you can have other people who want to step up and provide service. It’s been a great opportunity.

Russel:

It’s necessary for people to move on and to move on to what’s next. That’s just part of life. It’s part of how things evolve. There’s certainly a lot of people that are going to be missed that many of us in the industry have worked closely with for years. I’m like you. I wish them the best and look forward to working with the new team.

Listen, I’m going to shift on you here a little bit, get to the meat of what I asked you to get on and want to talk about. I’ve had conversations. I would say my take on the Trump administration is they’re moving very fast.

They have given very clear direction to all the agencies, not just DoT and PHMSA, to look for opportunities to increase performance and increase efficiency. How has PHMSA responded to that directive from the administration?

Keith:

That’s right. The President has asked all of the federal agencies to be more efficient, more effective, and to be more decisive in the decisions that they make and the policies that they implement.

That’s one of the things that has made this job so much fun for me, is to be able to come in with all of these initiatives and all the support we’re getting from the White House and other folks within the department to go make some impactful change.

We’re being thoughtful in the changes that we’re making, but we’re making decisive choices about where we want to go. A lot of times, not making a decision is a decision. There are costs associated with that. Continuing to do things the way that have been done in the past, that’s a decision too.

When you come in with a new administration with some new thoughts and a new agenda, it feels really good to have people who are willing to make a change, to make some decisive changes, and then to go out and to implement them.

We’ve seen that from the staff, too. The folks that are on the political side, we’re responsible for setting direction, making some of these big-picture decisions, but we need staff beneath us that can go out and implement. We’ve seen that across the board, extremely effective support that I’ve personally gotten.

I know Ben feels the same way, and Emily too. That we have an agency that’s very unique. We have a big job. We don’t have a lot of people, but we’ve come in with some new ideas and some new direction. We’ve had great responsiveness from the staff in getting things done.

Russel: Tell me about the advisory bulletin that Ben put out about new priorities. Can you walk us through? What is PHMSA trying to tell the industry? What does it mean in practice?

Keith:

We’ve done a couple of things in terms of setting down some markers on where we want to go in terms of direction. I’ll touch on a few of those. Then maybe we can spend some time focusing on some of the enforcement changes we’ve made.

In terms of priorities, Ben’s laid out some things on the rulemaking side. We have a pretty ambitious agenda in terms of the things that we want to get done on the pipeline safety side.

We’ve got some regulatory initiatives that we issued earlier this summer, some advanced notices of proposed rulemaking asking for comments on changes for LNG facilities, pipeline repair criteria, and then just give us all your good ideas on ways we can make our regulations better.

In July, we issued 28 pipeline safety rulemaking actions. In July, we had a series of pipeline safety standards updates that we did. Then we did some other proposed rules and final rules.

Part of that was to communicate to the stakeholders that are interested. PHMSA has received a lot of criticism in the past, rightly or wrongly, for not moving decisively or quickly on some of these things.

We’ve tried to take a fresh approach. We’ve tried to make some changes internally on how we’re queuing up our rulemaking initiatives, and then try to be more deliberate in getting things advanced faster. Part of that, some decisions that were maybe made in the past to do some of these mega rules and have these really big rulemakings that get bogged down.

We’re trying to advance initiatives that we think we can move discreetly so we can get some points on the board and keep the momentum going. Those are some of the things…

[crosstalk]

Russel: To that point, Keith, one of the things that’s really key that y’all have done and has needed to be done for a long time is go through the standards and update the rules to reference current versions of standards. It’s really an administrative detail.

Keith:

A lot of that stuff, industry invests a lot of time, energy and resources, and other stakeholders, by the way, in participating in these standards groups that are a great resource. There’s a lot of expertise that goes in developing these standards.

We incorporate dozens of them by reference into our rules, but we haven’t done a great job, in the past, of keeping pace with the new standards as they come out. These are the most modern way, the latest and greatest way, of doing things in our space. We want to make a conscious effort to keep up with those changes.

One, because we want to have the most modern standards in place, but also we want to be appreciative of the efforts that the folks who participate in those committees, they spend a lot of time putting those things together.

It’s not very rewarding when you do that and then a standard doesn’t get adopted or we end up having four or five editions that we run through before something gets pulled into the code. We’re trying to be a little more nimble.

Russel:

The reality of that is, new technology, new stuff happens in the industry. That takes three to five years. Then they write a standard. That takes three to five years. Then PHMSA needs to update things. That takes three to five years. By the time it gets updated in PHMSA, the reference is 10, 15 years old.

The need to accelerate that type of thing and maybe handle it different, in a more expedited way, is critical if you’re really going to improve safety performance.

Keith: It’s a great way to advance safety. Like I said, there’s a lot of time, energy, and effort that goes into those things. We owe it to the stakeholders that participate in that process and the ones who are interested in our rules to keep up. We’re trying to do that to the best that we can.

Russel: Going down the same thing…What I’m trying to tee up is a little bit more conversation about the specifics of how PHMSA is focusing its resources in terms of actually improving safety performance. You’ve talked about some things, but I know that there are some key priorities that have been communicated to industry.

Keith:

One of the things that I’ve spent a lot of time working on is our enforcement process, trying to make some reforms to the existing enforcement process, and then working with Linda Daugherty and the Office of Pipeline Safety on articulating what the agency’s inspection and enforcement authorities are going to be on a go-forward basis.

When we’re talking about enforcement reforms, we’re talking about changes that we think are necessary to ensure that our process is fair, transparent, respects due process.

When we’re talking about enforcement and inspection priorities, we’re talking about ways that we can focus our resources and that other stakeholders can focus their resources to make sure we’re doing everything we can to get the best safety outcomes, realizing that we live in a world with limited resources.

Everybody has that. We have a really big set of regulations. The code’s got a lot of provisions in it. All of those provisions are important in and of themselves, but what we’ve tried to do is focus on key areas where we think, if we’re going to invest time, energy, and resources in things, we want to make sure we’re focusing on those areas that are going to drive the best outcome.

In those two buckets, reforms to the enforcement process and then these new enforcement priorities, we hope, are going to drive better outcomes in the long term.

Russel: That is a really important understanding of…We have a certain amount of resources we can expend on these things. We need to get the most impact we possibly can on how we direct those resources. That’s true for the agency and the operators. In fact, frankly, that’s true for the other stakeholders as well.

Keith: If everything’s a priority, nothing’s a priority.

Russel: Nothing’s a priority. Exactly.

Keith: There’s a reason people say that.

Russel: Not everything moves the needle the same way or the same amount.

Keith:

Exactly. We know that there are just certain areas within the regulations that we think going that extra mile or putting that extra level of scrutiny on these areas are going to drive better outcomes.

If I could maybe set the conversation up, I’ll just start a little bit on some of the enforcement reforms that we’ve put in place. With the new administration coming into office, we got some guidance from the General Counsel for the Department of Transportation about what the enforcement procedures were going to look like for the entire Department of Transportation globally or DoT-wide.

PHMSA is just one of the modal administrations within this broader umbrella of DoT agencies. In March, we had this new guidance from the General Counsel on process reforms or procedural requirements that he wanted to see in place on our enforcement process.

Then, I was aware, from my time in private practice, of some other things, ways that the enforcement process was being handled. Process improvements that I thought could be made either because they were directly responsible to prior congressional mandates, or because, as a matter of practice and procedure, it was a better way of going.

Two big things that we’ve done. One, we’ve provided some new direction on how we’re calculating civil penalties for violations of the pipeline safety regulations. We have a civil penalty worksheet that we’ve put in place to help us have a more consistent and uniform process when we’re assessing proposed penalties for violations.

One of the things that historically was happening was when we changed that worksheet, sometimes we weren’t using the version of the worksheet that was in effect when someone committed an alleged violation when we were proposing or assessing penalties down the line.

That’s not a good thing from a due process perspective. You want to be subject to the requirements that were in place at the time when the conduct was committed. We made this process reform where we’re not going to do that anymore. If we make changes to our civil penalty worksheet, we’re going to only apply those prospectively to conduct that occurs after a change.

The other thing that we did was we had a congressional mandate from Congress to provide additional agency records in our enforcement proceedings to make sure that operators, owners of pipeline facilities that had administrative proceedings before us, we were giving them all the records that we had to make sure that they could basically adjudicate all of the relevant facts and legal issues and have a fair shake in front of the agency.

We instituted a new policy where we’re going to be providing additional records to operators to help them in the enforcement process. Those are two common sense, basic reforms to enforcement that we think we’re going to have a more transparent and more fair enforcement process.

It’s also going to make my job easier in reducing legal risk on the back end because when these cases come out, I want to make sure that these cases are going to stand the test of time. If we do have litigation or challenges to how we’re doing enforcement, we can withstand judicial scrutiny. That’s two of the big enforcement reforms that we’ve initiated.

Russel:

No, that’s interesting. That’s a little outside my pay grade…

[laughter]

Russel:

because I don’t live in that world. If I do, it’s because I’m an expert providing input on a particular issue. I’m not really living in that domain. It’s very different. I’m aware of it. I’ve been around it. I know that’s not what I do and don’t want to do. God bless you.

I would say that just the idea of I’m only going to be responsible for what was in effect at the time something occurred, that’s straightforward common sense.

The idea that there’s some kind of disclosure where all the documentation about an incident is made available before it’s adjudicated, that’s also common sense. That’s just standard practice in that kind of work.

Keith:

These are the kinds of things where I had to make some decisions when I came into this position on how we wanted to go on those two issues. I viewed it that way. I had the experience of having been on both sides of the V, as they say, in my business.

I was a lawyer for the agency adjudicating cases when I was here. I was a lawyer on the outside, adjudicating cases on behalf of operators, so I had a good perspective.

I also had some familiarity with the way that other adjudicatory proceedings were run at other federal agencies and at the state level. These are two common sense reforms that we put in place that I think is going to make the process better, and it’s certainly going to make my life a little bit easier in terms of legal risk.

Russel: That’s probably the material thing that I take away from this conversation, because what you want to have happen is when an adjudication occurs with the agency, that it’s put to bed afterwards. That there’s not further litigation and such, because that takes resources away from other things that could have safety impact.

Keith: Yeah, it does. It requires an investment of time from my staff and from other folks within the program.

Russel: Same thing for the operators. They’re continuing to take time and resources for it. The quicker you can actually have these issues settled, the better.

Keith: Yeah, and that’s what we’re trying to do and to control the legal issues that we can control. These are two of those issues. I’m not so naive to think that we’re not going to [laughs] get sued by anybody.

Russel: Of course.

Keith: I think we’re getting a healthy dose of that. I expect to get a little bit more as we go along. Anyways, these are common-sense changes.

Russel: Let’s talk about the enforcement priorities that Ben put out in his advisory bulletin. Walk us through, if you would, at a high level. Let’s talk about them in a bit more detail.

Keith:

We had some internal conversations when the new administration came into office. We decided we think it’s a good idea for the Office of Pipeline Safety to announce areas of inspection and enforcement priorities, to communicate to interested stakeholders, “These are the areas where we intend to focus our resources in the coming years.”

That’s healthy. There are a lot of federal agencies that do that, like the EPA, the FBI, all kinds of places where they will say, “These are the things that we intend to focus on.”

Again, understanding that we live in a world of limited resources, we want to make sure that we’re doing things that are impactful, but we also want to make sure that we’re being open, and transparent, and clear to stakeholders.

Pipeline safety is a shared responsibility. Everybody has a role to play in the process. If we provide clear expectations to interested stakeholders about what we intend to focus on, that’s good for us. It’s good for them, so they know where we’re going.

Nobody feels, at the end of the day, like, “We didn’t know that that was an issue. We didn’t know that that was some area that we needed to focus on.” It’s a way to level the playing field and communicate. We’ve also identified some areas where we think, if we focus our enforcement resources on these areas, we’re going to get the greatest long-term impact for pipeline safety.

What Linda did in her role as the Acting Associate Administrator for Pipeline Safety, she put together a memo that she sent to her entire OPS staff, that basically said, “We have five areas where we’re going to focus our enforcement resources on in the near term. We’re going to focus on incidents and accidents.”

” We’re going to focus on high-consequence areas and moderate-consequence areas. We’re going to focus on control room management and leak detection. We’re going to focus on damage prevention. Then we’re going to focus on transactions and due diligence.” I know I just rattled off a long list of five things.

Russel:

I want to respond to it. I read this, and I just want to communicate to you what my reaction was when I read it. When I read, “Incidents and accidents,” I’m like, “That’s self-evident. I get that.”

When I read, “MCAs and HCAs,” I said, “That kind of makes sense, but I’m curious what the details of that are.” Then when I read, “CRM and leak detection,” I’m like, “Same kind of thing. It kind of makes sense, but what are the details? Why there?”

Damage prevention makes a huge amount of sense because, particularly in the utility space, it’s a big, big deal. A lot of that is outside the operator’s control.

Having additional federal resources focused on that actually makes sense. It could provide support to Congress and other lawmakers at the state and local level. Lastly, I saw, “Transition and due diligence,” and I went, “Huh?” [laughs]

Keith: The last one, I’ll touch on that at the end, the transactions and due diligence piece.

Russel: I want to just give you my reaction. I’ll let you unpack it because I know you got a lot more to say about that than I do.

Keith:

High-level, there’s definitely some overlap in each of these topic areas. What we were trying to focus on, what we are focusing on, are we know what the common causes of incidents and accidents are.

We are in the business to prevent those things. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we have rules and regulations. That’s why we have an inspection and enforcement program.

When those things happen, we want to make sure we’re putting an appropriate level of resources into that investigation and oversight to make sure it doesn’t happen again. For whatever reason, when you have an incident or accident, something along the way in the system didn’t work the way it was supposed to work.

We want to make sure that we have a full and complete understanding of why those things happen. If we do need to bring an enforcement action, those are the ones that we should be bringing. That’s where we should be investing our resources.

On high-consequence areas and moderate-consequence areas, we have regulations that target those areas because there’s a greater risk to public safety. These are areas where there’s more population.

We have a special set of regulations that are targeted to protect those populations, things like integrity management requirements for gas transmission and distribution lines. We have new requirements to protect moderate-consequence areas, like an IM-like program.

Again, these are areas where we want to focus our resources because we know those are areas that we’ve identified as having a heightened risk, at least from a public safety perspective, and we want to be protecting the public.

The CRM, leak detection, damage prevention. CRM and leak detection, those are processes that we have in place to help us prevent incidents and accidents, particularly on the CRM side.

Leak detection, that’s something where you have an early indicator of a potential event. Again, that’s more of focusing our inspection and enforcement resources on these preventative regulations…

[crosstalk]

Russel:

I want to comment on that. That’s really interesting. What I generally tell control rooms when I’m working with them is it’s very rare that the control room is the reason there’s an incident. It is extraordinarily common that the control room is directly accountable for the scope and scale of the incident.

It’s really more about, are you prepared to mitigate? Can you mitigate quickly if something were to actually happen? Can you identify? Can you respond? Can you mitigate and minimize consequence?

Keith: We’ve seen some pretty significant accidents where that chain of events broke down. We had incidents and accidents that became much worse. Either things that were indicators of incidents and accidents weren’t picked up in the control room, or something happened in the control room where a system was restarted, or a valve wasn’t closed, or something happened and it made an event worse.

Russel: In the chaos of the moment, not having clarity and failing to respond quickly and accurately, there certainly have been a number of incidents in the last five years-plus of that nature.

Keith:

On transactions and due diligence, this is something I bring more from what I learned on the outside and trying to emphasize here. We have a lot of assets in the United States that are bought and sold. As part of those transactions, we want to make sure that regulatory compliance isn’t something that gets lost in the wash.

Your regulatory compliance is an important part of any transaction. The buyer and the seller need to take appropriate steps to make sure they’re in compliance on both sides of the transaction, so what we don’t have is a buyer who’s selling an asset with a known noncompliance and leaving that for somebody else to handle.

We don’t want somebody who’s acquiring an asset to not have an incentive to do what they need to do to stay in compliance or to take action to address compliance issues.

Viewing these transactions as a moment when both sides can take a gut check on compliance and take a harder look at what’s going on and make sure, whatever I’m buying and selling here, somebody in that transaction on either side has to make sure that compliance is taken care of.

We don’t want things that were missed. We don’t want assets with long-term compliance problems being sold with no plan to address them. That’s where we’re coming from on the transaction.

Russel: I actually think that’s astute. That’s really astute. What that is going to require for people that are doing these transactions is they’re going to have to really make sure that their due diligence is addressing the safety, performance, and compliance issues around the asset.

Keith:

We don’t want regulatory compliance to serve as a barrier to transactions occurring. That’s not how we’re framing it. You have two responsible operators involved in a transaction.

Let’s make sure that compliance doesn’t get lost, that somebody in the organizations is putting their hand up or saying, “We have some compliance issues here that we need to resolve,” and that those two parties can work it out.

Russel:

That kind of thing’s common in those kinds of transactions. It’s just making sure it’s in the due diligence and it’s part of the transfer agreement, that they’re addressed.

What’s next at the agency? You’ve been there a whopping total of seven months. What’s next? You got another three and a half years under the current administration. What’s next?

Keith:

What’s next? Let me start with these enforcement reforms and priorities. What’s next is we have these new reforms and priorities in place. It’s early days on some of this. It’s going to take a little bit of time for these changes to manifest themselves in the enforcement system.

We’ve implemented some of our reforms in pending cases, but those reforms will be in place for new cases going forward. In terms of the inspection and enforcement priorities, those things are things that went live back in July. I’m hoping that we start to see the benefits of these changes as we start to do inspections and enforcement on a go-forward basis.

Some significant near-term changes were made. Now that those changes are in place, we’re going to see some long-term benefits. Might take a couple of months before these things start to wind their way through, but that’s my hope.

In terms of the agenda that we’re looking to pursue overall, we’re looking to keep moving expeditiously. That’s the communication that we’ve gotten from the President and the leadership team over here at the department.

We’re trying to be thoughtful, but we’re also trying to make sure…We have some things on the agenda that we want to get done. We know that we’re on the clock. It is not a recipe for success to wait until year three or year four to try to wrap those things up.

We’re trying to move quickly on our most important priorities to make sure that we get things done in the early part of the administration here, so that we can show that our policies are sound.

We can put them in place and let them start to work for a while. Then we hope that all the stakeholders involved in the process will be like, “Those were good choices. We should leave those good choices in place.”

Russel:

That’s excellent. The other thing for listeners to be aware of is all the things that are out there that are congressional mandates are still out there and congressional mandates and still have to be acted upon.

You might have a new President, a new administration, but you’re still accountable to Congress. You still have that process and those directives in place that you need to respond to.

Keith:

We have some big-ticket items that weren’t finished in recent years, one of those being the leak detection and repair rule. We know we need to figure out where we’re going to go directionally on that and get that wrapped up.

We do have some other mandates. I’m trying to think through now. Maybe some stuff related to idle pipe, the LNG facilities rule. That’s directly responsive to a pair of congressional mandates. We are very mindful. Congress is very good…

Russel: [laughs]

Russel:

at reminding us of the headlines that we…I have learned that Congress is not necessarily a shy body. They will let us know when they think we’re not meeting their expectations.

I think we have a unique situation here, where we have support within the department and from the White House. We have a team together here that has a lot of experience in these areas. We think we have the right folks in place to try to advance some pretty big ideas.

We’re going to keep working to try to get as much done for as long as we’re given the honor of serving in these jobs.

Russel: Well, I just want to make a couple of closing remarks. First, congratulations on being in the position. I’m proud of you as a friend. It’s awesome to see people you’ve worked with…

Keith:

Well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I’m not sure if it’s congrats or condolences.

[crosstalk]

Russel:

Might be both.

[laughter]

Keith: Each day, all of my days are like three days in one, so yeah, I go through the stages. No, it’s heartfelt. I appreciate it.

Russel:

If there’s anything I can do with this platform to help you communicate with industry, or whatever, just know I’m up for it and would welcome the opportunity.

Ultimately, what we’re trying to do, what you’re trying to do, it’s all the same thing. We’re trying to help operators be more efficient, more effective, more safe. Ultimately, that’ll be your scorecard at the end of the four years.

Keith:

We’ll see. That’s what they put in my tombstone. We’ll see. No, I think what you’re doing, you’re doing a great service to the people who care about these issues just by having the platform and having a place where people with ideas can come on and talk. I know you had Congressman Weber on a couple of months ago.

[crosstalk]

Russel: That was fun.

Keith:

That was an interesting conversation. One of my late nights here at the office, I popped that on and got to listen to it. I thought it was great and informative. Having interesting people on, asking interesting questions, keeping the conversation going, you’re doing a great service to us by having the platform.

[crosstalk]

Russel:

I’m not running out of curiosity anytime soon.

[laughter]

Keith: With your curiosity and my workload, perhaps we can get a few things done. I appreciate the kind words on the job. As I said, I’m very appreciative.

Russel: Look, I’ll let you get back to it. Thanks for taking the time out to talk with me. I’m looking forward to having the conversation again at some point in the not-too-far-distant future. We can start talking about what’s been accomplished and all the blocking and tackling.

Keith:

You usually ask me a random question out of…

[crosstalk]

Keith: field before I leave the show. That has been your wands, but I feel like you’re hesitating as though in my current role…

Russel: No, no, it’s not that I’m hesitating at all. I just can’t think of anything.

Keith: [laughs]

Keith:

That’s good because then you can’t ask me a question that I’m going to get in trouble answering and have to deal with it…

[crosstalk]

Russel:

From my perspective, I don’t think anything that PHMSA is rolling out, to my mind, is controversial. To me, it all makes sense. It all lines up with what I understand about what’s going on in terms of real safety performance in the world.

What’ll get a lot more interesting is, if we can get you back on when you get clear about next steps on leak detection and repair, and how that’s going to get across the finish line, I will likely have very controversial questions when that comes up.

Keith:

I will let Ben do that episode of the podcast.

[laughter]

Keith: Perhaps I could impress Paul and disservice on that one.

Russel: That would be awesome. That would be awesome.

Keith: To the extent that the department will let us do it, I know Ben has expressed interest. I assume Paul will as well, to try to get opportunities to come on the show and talk more about what we’re doing.

Russel: Absolutely. I would welcome that opportunity. It’d be great. Again, thank you.

Keith: Thank you so much.

Russel:

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

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Russel:

If you would like to have particular topics discussed, or if you’d even like to be a guest on the podcast, please let me know. You can do that either at the Contact Us page at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com, or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.

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