Courtesy: NTSB

San Bruno in 1956, as PG&E reroutes 615 feet of pipeline that later exploded

Pacific Gas and Electric Company may face fines exceeding $1 million a day for what state regulators described Wednesday as the company’s “willful” refusal to produce natural gas pipeline records that were demanded in the wake of a disaster in San Bruno.

Decades of sloppy pipeline record-keeping appear to have contributed to the Sept. 9 pipeline explosion and fire, which left eight people dead, and the company on Tuesday provided the California Public Utilities Commission with inspection and other records covering just a portion of its network of pipelines.

Tuesday was the deadline set for PG&E to provide records covering all of its pipelines in populated areas, but it documented just 91 percent of pipelines installed after 1961 and a mere 30 percent of pipelines installed before that date. The pipeline segments that exploded beneath San Bruno were manufactured in the 1940s and 1950s.

“While we have made good progress," the company told the CPUC in its filing Tuesday, "we are not satisfied with these results and will continue to search for and review our files for the remaining pressure test records."

But that was not good enough for the CPUC. The agency has long been criticized for being overly friendly with PG&E and other privately owned utilities, but is now operating under the oversight of consumer advocates who were installed recently by Gov. Jerry Brown.

“PG&E’s willful noncompliance of our direct order may put public safety at risk,” CPUC Executive Director Paul Clanon said in a statement sent to journalists Wednesday. “We must be certain that PG&E knows the types of pipes it has in the ground in order to know the maximum pressure under which those pipes can operate safety.”

The pipeline that exploded beneath San Bruno contained welds, some of them extremely poorly made, that PG&E did not know existed. That meant the company could have overestimated the amount of pressure that the pipe could withstand. The explosion followed a mild pressure spike caused by an electrical outage.

“Today I sent to PG&E, by hand delivery, a letter of demand in order to obtain the documents and analysis required by the CPUC and the NTSB," Clanon wrote in the statement Wednesday. "It has been six months since the tragedy in San Bruno and we are working diligently to improve pipeline safety. PG&E must do its part by fully and timely complying with our orders, or face penalties.”

CPUC commissioners will next meet March 24, when they will consider a request by agency staff to impose fines and other penalties on PG&E for “deliberately not complying” with the agency’s orders.

The CPUC has authority to impose fines of $20,000 per violation per day; multiple instances of wrongdoing could result in fines of $1 million a day or more.

If fines are levied, they would be the first penalties imposed on PG&E for alleged pipeline violations that have come to light following the San Bruno disaster.

PG&E spokesman Joe Molica said Wednesday that the company has mobilized hundreds of employees to work shifts around the clock to help gather pipeline records and that it plans to test or replace 150 miles of pipelines beneath populated areas this year and will expand the program in coming years.