Are pipeline companies required to remove lines that are out of service?

Question from Margaret Quinn, Uwchlan Township

Jon Hurdle

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Jon is an experienced journalist who has covered a wide range of general and business-news stories for national and local media in the U.S. and his native U.K. As a former Reuters reporter, he spent several years covering the early stages of Pennsylvania’s natural gas fracking boom and was one of the first national reporters to write about the effects of gas development on rural communities. Jon trained as a general news reporter with a British newspaper chain and later worked for several business-news organizations including Bloomberg News and Market News International, covering topics including economics, bonds, currencies and monetary policy. Since 2011, he has been a freelance writer, contributing Philadelphia-area news to The New York Times; covering economics for Market News, and writing stories on the environment and other subjects for a number of local outlets including StateImpact. He has written two travel guidebooks to the European Alps; lived in Australia, Switzerland, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and visited many countries including Ethiopia, Peru, Taiwan, and New Zealand. Outside of work hours, Jon can be found running, birding, cooking, and, when weather permits, gardening in the back yard of a Philadelphia row home where he lives with his partner, Kate.

David Mano/Submitted

A Sunoco pipeline that has been exposed in a creek at Uwchlan Township, Chester County is not Mariner East 1, as the company initially told state and local officials, but an inactive line, the company said Friday.

January 8, 2019 | 11:10 AM

Margaret Quinn’s question followed community concerns last summer that a length of pipe in a creek bed in the township was part of Sunoco’s Mariner East 1, a repurposed 1930s-era pipeline that carries natural gas liquids from western Pennsylvania to Marcus Hook in Delaware County, using the same right of way as the new Mariner East 2 line that is still under construction.

Sunoco said in July that the pipe section had been part of ME1 but was abandoned in 2015 and had been grouted and capped. The company initially told the Public Utility Commission that the pipe was part of ME1, but then said it had investigated further and determined that it was an inactive section of the line that had been replaced.

Pipeline companies are not required to remove lengths of pipeline that are no longer in service and have been abandoned, according to the Public Utility Commission. It said pipeline owners are required to map abandoned lines under the amended PA One Call law, which is designed to prevent contractors hitting underground infrastructure such as pipelines during construction projects.

“There is no state or federal requirement to remove abandoned pipe,” said Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, a PUC spokesman. But he said some easement agreements may require the removal of abandoned equipment.