The Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board has published the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (Integrity Management System for Petroleum and Petroleum Products Pipelines) Regulations, 2021 on August 27, 2021.
Key features of the Regulations are:
- Applicability: These regulations shall apply to all the entities engaged in laying, building, operating or expanding, maintaining and decommissioning Petroleum and Petroleum Products Pipelines.
- Purpose: The regulation frameworks the basic features and requirements for developing and implementing an effective and efficient Integrity Management Plan (IMP) for Petroleum and Petroleum Products Pipeline system.
- Objectives: The objective of Pipeline Integrity Management System (PIMS) is to maintain integrity of Petroleum and Petroleum Products Pipelines at all times to ensure public safety, protect environment and ensure availability of pipeline to transport petroleum and petroleum product without interruptions and to minimize risks associated with accidents and losses.
- Integrity Management System: The availability of the Integrity Management System shall allow personnel engaged in integrity tasks to have clearly established work aims and targets in the short, medium and long term, which undoubtedly will enhance their efficiency and satisfaction to attain them.
- The integrity management program shall comprise all the necessary plans, implementation schedule and assessment of its effectiveness in order to ensure safe and reliable operation of the pipelines which should be undertaken by all the operators.
- For operators implementing an integrity management program in the absence of base line and performance data, it may become imperative to adopt a prescriptive integrity management program initially.
*Tanvi Singh, Editorial Assistant has reported this brief.