Oil and gas pipelines running near rural homes pose a safety threat, often lack regulation

Pipelines carrying explosive oil and natural gas from drilling operations pose "a safety threat in rural areas, where they sometimes run within feet or yards of homes with little or no safety oversight," Lisa Riordan Seville reports for NBC News. (Railroad Commission of Texas photo: A fireball burns after a gathering pipeline ruptured near Alice, Tex., in 2012)

"The rapidly expanding network of pipes, known as gathering lines, carry oil and gas from fracking fields in many parts of the country to storage facilities and major transmission lines," Seville writes. "They are subject to the same risks––corrosion, earthquakes, sabotage and construction accidents––as transmission lines. But unlike those pipelines, about 90 percent of gathering lines do not fall under federal safety or construction regulations because they run through rural areas, the Government Accountability Office reported in 2012."

The U.S. has more than 240,000 miles of gathering lines, and about 414,000 additional miles could be built by 2035, according a report by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, Seville writes. "Pipelines are widely seen the safest way to transport natural gas. But accidents, including a 2010 explosion in San Bruno, Calif., that killed eight people and destroyed nearly 40 homes, have exposed ongoing issues even with regulated transmission lines, which typically connect storage facilities to large consumers like factories or to distribution centers."

The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration "indicated in 2011 it might write new regulations on gathering lines and proposed gathering risk data as a first step. But the proposal quickly ran into resistance from the industry," Seville writes. "PHMSA closed comments on its proposal to collect such data in 2012. There has been no action on the plan since."

States have been encouraged to write their own rules, with Ohio last year passing a bill that extends to rural areas the federal regulations on gathering lines in populated areas, Seville reports. Texas passed regulations last year opening the door for federal oversight of rural lines, but that won't take effect until September 2015 at the earliest. And despite new pipeline rules passed in Pennsylvania in 2012, some lines remain unregulated. (Read more)