Thread by @OnPointRadio

Live: The cost and urgency to fix our natural gas infrastructure.

We speak with @gregorykorte, @kierablessing and Cynthia Quarterman of @AtlanticCouncil.

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@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "A lot of the infrastructure was built a century or more ago when we first discovered natural gas as a cheap, abundant source of energy," @gregorykorte says. "A lot of it has not been replaced since that time."

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "There are tens of thousands of old cast iron gas mains in major American cities," @gregorykorte says.

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "It's, by and large, to a lot of people, out of sight out of mind," @gregorykorte says of the gas mains. "As these things begin to corrode over the years they can be extremely dangerous."

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "There were about 80 fires by the end of the evening," @kierablessing says of the Merrimack Valley gas explosions in Massachusetts.

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "As soon as I pulled out of the parking lot you could see these plumes of black smoke covering the city," @kierablessing says of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the gas explosions in the city in September.

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "A lot of people think this has been resolved, two month laters, and it really hasn't," @kierablessing says.

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil Congress "created an office of pipeline safety to sort of oversee the standard federal regulations, but still left it to the states to enforce them," @gregorykorte explains. "And that's pretty much what we have today."

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "On the same day the NTSB released their preliminary report that essentially pointed the finger at Columbia Gas, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities released a statement that they were asking gas companies to review their own safety protocols," @kierablessing says.

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "We're talking about a total of 600 inspectors for about 2.1 million miles of pipeline, both oil and gas, around the country," Cynthia Quarterman of @AtlanticCouncil says. "So the coverage is not great."

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "Since 2010, the federal regulators have emphasized this self-regulating mechanism where each utility comes up with its own plan," @gregorykorte says. "That has some advantages because every system is different. But it also leaves the utility to decide what the problems are."

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "People have told me that they're told Columbia Gas is coming in the next 72 hours, then they never show up. They tell me they have no idea Columbia Gas is coming and they show up at their doorstep, that they have to come five different times to fix a stove," @kierablessing says.

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "We have seen the amount of main service lines that are cast iron go out of use, but we're still far away from where we need to be," Cynthia Quarterman of @AtlanticCouncil says. "There's still about 7,000 miles of pipeline."

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil "We immediately put out a survey asking every company to tell us everything they could possibly think of to prevent overpressurization from occurring," Christina Sames of @aga_naturalgas says of a response to the Merrimack Valley.

@gregorykorte @kierablessing @AtlanticCouncil @aga_naturalgas "Whether it be looking at additional equipment on the system, additional processes and procedures in place -- what else needs to be done?" Christina Sames of @aga_naturalgas says. "It's in nobody's interest to have an incident like this occur."