A federal regulatory agency typically allows pipeline companies to make "minor" changes to laboratory reports on the causes of line accidents such as the one in Mayflower in 2013, a spokesman said Tuesday.
Damon Hill, a spokesman for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, confirmed the practice a day after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Exxon Mobil had successfully proposed numerous changes to a Texas laboratory's report on the cause of the Pegasus pipeline's rupture.
"There are times when there could be some corrections that need to be made to the ... report such as [information about] the pipe or the manufacturer of the pipe ... things only the operator would know," Hill said. "So, they're given the [report on the] metallurgical exam to look at it.
"We make sure that they're not making any substantive changes or any type of changes that influences the" laboratory's determination of what caused a pipeline to fail, Hill added. "As far as we know, any changes that Exxon Mobil may have made to the .... report didn't have any impact" on the finding of what caused the Pegasus to rupture.
"As long as they're making minor changes, things that don't influence the cause determination, we don't have any problem with it," Hill said.
Exxon Mobil's participation in the final report became public after a federal judge ordered numerous documents unsealed in a class-action lawsuit against the company over the Mayflower oil spill. Two of those documents related to the company's involvement in the report.
In one, a representative of Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. sent an email about the proposed changes to the laboratory and to an employee at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The safety administration is part of that department.
The development prompted an attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit to say the documents show "that the report was not independent as Exxon had claimed."
The oil giant had proposed many changes, additions and deletions, and many of them were accepted and incorporated into the final report before it was released to the public.
In that lawsuit, scheduled for trial in August, a federal judge last week ordered Exxon Mobil to provide the plaintiffs' attorneys with the addresses of property owners whose land is subject to an easement for the Pegasus pipeline.
The decision in Little Rock by U.S. District Judge Brian Miller came in the lawsuit filed on behalf of property owners along the Pegasus pipeline in Arkansas, Texas, Missouri and Illinois.
Two couples who own land in Mayflower filed the complaint after the pipeline ruptured March 29, 2013, and spilled an estimated 210,000 gallons of heavy crude.
In a ruling dated Friday, Miller said the oil company must produce all lists, addresses and information pertaining to property owners whose land is subject to an easement by the pipeline, which extends about 850 miles from Patoka, Ill., to the Texas Gulf Coast.
One of the plaintiffs' attorneys, Marcus Bozeman, said Exxon Mobil already has given the attorneys information on Arkansas but not on the other states. The Arkansas information shows that the pipeline crosses 2,198 tracts of land. Some people own more than one tract, and some tracts have more than one owner, Bozeman said.
The total number of property owners to be notified about the lawsuit under the judge's order wasn't available Tuesday.
Exxon Mobil did not immediately comment on whether it will comply with the order or appeal it.
Miller said, however, that the plaintiffs should limit dissemination of the notice to those people whose property is at the "centerline" of the pipeline. He agreed with Exxon Mobil that it would be "overbroad" to include potential class-action members whose property is within 1,320 feet or 75 feet of the pipeline.
The judge also ordered the plaintiffs' attorneys to strike any reference in the planned notice to the possibility of recovering damages in the case. But he overruled the company's objection to including references to the Mayflower oil spill in the notice.
Miller also denied Exxon Mobil's renewed request to decertify the class. He had granted class-action status to the lawsuit in August.
In doing so, Miller ruled that Arnez and Charletha Harper can legally represent people who currently own property that is subject to an easement for the pipeline and that is physically crossed by the pipeline.
The lawsuit seeks either cancellation of the easements and removal of the pipeline from their property or a requirement that Exxon replace the pipeline.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has proposed that Exxon Mobil pay a total of $2,659,200 in fines for nine "probable" violations of safety regulations as a result of the government's investigation after the Mayflower accident. Exxon Mobil has appealed.
State Desk on 01/21/2015