James Oberstar: “Today, we are finally going to be able to vote on pipeline safety legislation worthy of the name. It is regrettable it…”

“Today, we are finally going to be able to vote on pipeline safety legislation worthy of the name. It is regrettable it has taken us 3 years to get here, but the bill before the House is a good bill. It is the result of long, intense, constructive negotiations among the parties to this process, including our Republican leadership on our committee, the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), and his staff, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) and his staff, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and his staff, represented here today by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher). This is a compromise in the best sense of that word. We have all yielded some and accepted some. It is one that will promote pipeline safety and legislation that should be widely supported. We were very far apart at the outset of this process. I had serious reservations about the bill, H.R. 3609, as introduced, because I believed very strongly that the introduced bill failed to respond adequately to a number of important safety concerns, many of which date back to the mid-1980s when I chaired the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and held hearings on pipeline safety in the aftermath of several tragedies throughout the United States, including one very serious fatal pipeline blast in Minnesota that killed people in the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities.”