Washington’s pipeline safety program is paid for with a combination of federal pipeline safety grants and fees on the pipeline systems inspected by the program.

Approximately 40 percent of the program is paid by federal base grant from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous and Materials Safety Administration.

Approximately 15 percent, the program costs that are paid to the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission as agency overhead, are allocated to companies based on their proportion of total pipeline miles.

The remaining 45 percent of the program costs are assigned to companies using effort-based allocation system. The program tracks all of its hours that are spent working directly on a specific pipeline and the allocation is based on each company’s percentage of those hours.

The fee is determined each year and changes every July.

For more information about how the pipeline safety program is funded, please e-mail us at: pipelinesafety@wutc.wa.gov.

2006 fee order and spreadsheet