The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, issued a March 25, 2025 advisory bulletin to promote and to encourage regulated pipeline owners and operators in developing and implementing a pipeline safety management system (PSMS) based on a framework such as the one detailed in the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) Recommended Practice (RP) 1173: Pipeline Safety Management Systems (API RP 1173). The contents of this advisory bulletin do not have the force and effect of law. They are not meant to bind operators nor the public in any way.
PHMSA develops and enforces regulations for the safe, reliable, and environmentally sound operation of America’s 2.6 million mile pipeline transportation system and the nearly 1 million daily shipments of hazardous materials by land, sea, and air.
“Safety Management Systems bring about a much-needed evolution of internal pipeline safety management structures, policies, and procedures that will ultimately lead us to achieve our goal of zero incidents,” said PHMSA Acting Administrator Ben Kochman. “We encourage all regulated pipeline owners and operators to fully embrace the continuous improvement and enhanced safety benefits that come with implementing a pipeline SMS.”
PHMSA explains this is consistent with section 205 of the Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act of 2020 (Pub. L. 116-260),[18] which directed the U.S. Secretary of Transportation to “promote” the implementation of pipeline safety management systems by pipeline operators, and the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) Safety Recommendation P-24-002. This advisory bulletin promotes the implementation of PSMSs to improve the safety performance of the Nation’s pipeline system continually to protect the public from the risks associated with pipelines.
For more background on this bulletin in its Federal Register notice, click HERE.
API RP 1173 provides a PSMS framework that builds upon an operator’s existing practices with particular emphasis on proactively looking for safety gaps, encouraging the non-punitive reporting of safety issues, and promptly responding to those issues. API RP 1173 emphasizes clarifying the safety roles and responsibilities of leadership, top management, and employees at all levels throughout the operator’s organization, including contractor support. PSMS, underpinned by a strong safety culture, makes safety programs and processes more effective to help prevent pipeline accidents.
The 10 essential elements of PSMSs outlined in API RP 1173, and the principles underlying them, apply to operators of any size and complexity. The complexity of a pipeline operator’s PSMS program should be appropriate for the size of their operations and the risks their systems pose to the public and environment.
PHMSA encourages the voluntary adoption of PSMS based on a framework such as the one detailed in API RP 1173, as PHMSA believes developing and implementing PSMS would be an effective way to enhance pipeline safety systematically. PHMSA shares NTSB’s view that a voluntarily adopted PSMS program can ensure pipelines are designed, constructed, operated, and maintained in a way that complies with more than just the minimum safety standards found in regulations.
For the reasons noted herein, PHMSA strongly encourages regulated pipeline owners and operators to take the following actions to strengthen their pipeline safety programs:
- Implement a PSMS program and ensure that the program covers all essential elements of an effective PSMS, such as those in API RP 1173.
- Ensure the PSMS program continuously evolves and improves.
- Maintain a positive safety culture that continually promotes diligence throughout the operator’s organization and addresses issues that can erode the safety culture.
About Guice Offshore Oil and Gas Vessels
Since the late 1940s, oil and gas companies have explored the U.S. Continental Shelf and International waters for hydrocarbons. Since that time, tens of thousands of wells have been drilled and many hundreds of platforms erected in U.S. waters alone. Support vessels are a necessary and critical part of the offshore E&P environment and are utilized in almost every phase of the extraction process from survey and drilling to production and abandonment. Guice Offshore maintains a strong presence in the northern Gulf of America E&P sector; our vessels are most often employed in support of Platform and Pipeline Operations (production activities, logistics, diving, ROV, inspection, maintenance, repair, plug and abandonment), and we also participate in certain early exploration phases like surveying.
