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Trans-Alaska pipeline grant/lease must be renewed by 2004 Jerry Brossia says JPO’s five-year plan focuses on renewal, demonstrating safe operation of pipeline, Alyeska Pipeline company culture, spill response ability Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
The grant and lease for the trans-Alaska pipeline system expires Jan. 22, 2004, at noon, Washington, D.C., time. The federal-state Joint Pipeline Office is gearing its work plan for the next five years to be able to document, as part of the renewal process, whether or not Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. is in compliance with the terms of the grant and lease.
“There’s a two-part test for grant and lease renewal under the federal system,” Jerry Brossia told PNA. Brossia, who was state pipeline coordinator from 1982-1997, switched to the federal side of the JPO in 1997 as federal authorized officer for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management/Office of Pipeline Monitoring. “The federal system,” he said, “requires that the applicant use the right-of-way for the purpose that it was intended to use. Well, that’s a no-brainer. And number two, he has to be in compliance with the grant and lease.”
Brossia said that demonstrating that Alyeska is in compliance requires developing measurable criteria to evaluate the various sections of the grant and lease. Scorecard on compliance “Alyeska is working with us to help develop the evaluation criteria for each stipulation so they’re not blindsided on what we’re looking at,” he said.
This is not an “I got you” game, Brossia said. “It’s extremely important to remember that Alyeska and the government are in a landlord-tenant relationship. We are not a regulatory agency. … We are a land management agency. A land management agency who’s issued a right of way to cross public land and … that right-of-way to cross public land has terms and conditions on it.
“If you are in breach of those terms and conditions, as the tenant you have every right to correct the breach.” Brossia said that Alyeska “has been in breach of various terms and conditions of that document since the get go.” But, he said, “they’ve fixed every damn thing that we’ve asked them to fix. Some of it not as timely as we wanted, but they’re fixing it.” JPO dates from 1990 The Joint Pipeline Office was established in 1990. Both federal and state agencies were involved in pipeline construction, Brossia said, some grouped together and some working on their own. After construction it was clear that somebody needed to be in charge of all of the different agencies and early efforts to build a gas line prompted the federal government to create a cabinet-level position to coordinate agencies for that project.
The gas line wasn’t built, but Brossia said the model — trying to funnel the federal agencies through one person and the state agencies through another — was the idea behind the JPO. The success of this coordination has ebbed and flowed, he said, because “there are so many agencies who have promulgated regulations and statutes since the 1974 right-of way agreement.”
The JPO was established because of corrosion and oil spill concerns after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. There is a formal agreement between the Department of Natural Resources and the Bureau of Land Management with the federal agency the lead of the two for monitoring the pipeline, Brossia said.
“Congress intended the Department of Interior to be responsible for the entire trans-Alaska Pipeline system,” he said. Under the right-of-way agreement, Interior has authority and is also directly reimbursed “for the monitoring oversight during construction, operation, maintenance and termination.” The state lacked a reimbursement agreement and its authority was limited to state land.
In 1990 Brossia negotiated an agreement with Alyeska to provide a one-stop agency in the JPO for monitoring and permitting. 12 focus areas grew out of audits Corrosion and oil spill planning were the JPO’s focus in the early 1990s. The summer of 1993, Brossia said, “was a monumental pivotal point for the office. The thing that was a sleeping giant is the whistle blowers. We did not have a clue about what was really going on inside the pump stations. We had no clue about what was going on with the work processes, management controls and quality program that Alyeska had done to essentially give assurance that the critical systems and components were safely operating, could safely shut down and start up to prevent major catastrophes on the pipeline. We were clue-less.”
In addition to audits which were done at Alyeska, a firm was hired to evaluate the government’s oversight at JPO, Brossia said. “And they essentially looked at the requirements under the grant and lease and our authorities and responsibilities and they said that you folks should focus on about 10 or 12 different areas. Number one, they said that you need to focus on the environment. And they also went on to say, and you’re not doing too bad a job there. Number two, they said, you need to look at operations — and you’re doing a terrible job there. And number three, you need to look at maintenance — and you’re pathetic there. And number four, you need to look at how they develop their projects at Alyeska, what they call the project design review.”
“The biggest thing that came out of this whole whistle-blower era,” Brossia said, “was how do you deal with people’s concerns and issues that they bring up.” The model came from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which had developed an employee concerns program, he said, which “essentially sets up a process where workers from contractors and the company can bring issues without fear that they would be retaliated against in one manner or another.” People at Alyeska had to learn, he said, “that there was a certain degree of sensitivity that had passed us by here in Alaska” when it came to what constituted harassment or intimidation. Sharper focus for 1999 The 12 focus areas recommended by the consultant, however, scattered the limited JPO staff (10 state, 35 federal employees) in too many directions, Brossia said, and it was decided it “would be better off to create a process that focused our work more on the actual work that Alyeska’s doing.” That focus will be on construction, operations, maintenance and on the culture and mindset of Alyeska.
The JPO has been doing comprehensive monitoring of the pipeline since 1997, Brossia said, and is coding all of its records — going back two years — to requirements in the grant and lease “so that we can retrieve them by any section of the grant and lease, whether they’re stipulations or general provisions, so our whole records become a very critical path in the organization of what we’re doing work-wise along with how we’re organized.”
“And we will work with Alyeska on that so they clearly know what they need to do to be in compliance with any given stipulation,” Brossia said. “Now some of those stipulations are vague. Some of them say it will be done in a workmanlike manner. How do you grade against that? Some of the stipulations have two or three pages.”
JPO has done 400 surveillances in the last two years as part of its comprehensive monitoring system, Brossia said, and Alyeska’s audit and surveillance people, “are pretty much finding the same thing we are. So we don’t think that we’re missing the mark by a substantial amount.”
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