南加州天然气公司’s Aliso Canyon gas leak, near Porter Ranch, Calif., so far has triggered a special federal task force, new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gas pipeline and storage emissions rules, and a criminal case.
The leak started in October, when pressure from a massive gas reservoir popped a well casing and unleashed 100,000 metric tons of methane into the Los Angeles area’s skies. Engineers spent almost five months trying to seal the leak. A safety shutoff valve had been removed, and several other engineering safety precautions had been neglected.

“There’s not going to be some regulation that comes in overnight and fixes everything because, right now, it’s not even illegal to leak natural gas,” says Richard Kuprewicz, pipeline safety engineer and president of Redmond, Wash.-based Accufacts Inc. “Aliso Canyon … was a huge amount of gas—$36 billion worth of damage.”

机构间任务组于4月初成立在运输管道和危险材料安全管理部（PHMSA）和能源部之间，伴随着巴拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama）总统的承诺，以增加对天然气存储设施的监督。
The Environmental Defense Fund, which partnered with Google Earth on a five-year project to map gas leaks, is skeptical. “For too long, we have gone without federal and state standards that require sufficient leak and safety inspections for oil and gas facilities, and industry has shown it can’t be trusted to fix the problem on his own,” the organization said in a statement.

“事后看来很容易至关重要，” Kuprewicz说。“但是，在这样的井中拥有两个级别的保护是风险管理标准。但是它被允许下降到一个。从工程的角度来看，这很糟糕。”
PHMSA在2月呼吁对存储井进行志愿检查。

Kuprewicz看不到这一点。他说：“很明显，我们需要的东西比志愿者计划还需要更多。”