PG&E kept faulty pipeline records, witness says

A Pacific Gas and Electric Co. engineer testified Wednesday that the company relied on records that it knew were faulty when it spiked pressure on its gas pipelines, including the line that later exploded in San Bruno.

“It was commonly known amongst the organization that it wasn’t a perfect database,” Todd Arnett told a federal court jury in San Francisco that is considering 13 criminal charges against PG&E — 12 counts of failing to identify risks to pipelines, failing to conduct needed inspections and knowingly keeping inaccurate records, and one count of obstructing a federal investigation of the deadly September 2010 San Bruno explosion.

Investigators found that a ruptured pipe seam at an incomplete weld caused the explosion and fire that killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes.

PG&E, California’s largest utility company, has been fined $1.6 billion by the state Public Utilities Commission for the explosion and could be fined as much as $562 million if convicted of the criminal charges.

Much of the evidence centers on PG&E’s longtime practice of raising pressure levels in its older gas pipelines once every five years so that it could maintain high volumes without having to conduct expensive safety tests.

[...] Warner, who left the utility in 2008 and now works for a PG&E consulting company, acknowledged that a federal auditor, during a meeting in the mid-2000s, had advised utilities seeking leeway in pipeline rules that “if a regulation tells you to stand on your head, you should stand on your head.”