Description:
· Note: Small Business Concerns may submit a proposal for all three focus areas. Proposals addressing multiple focus areas for this topic must be submitted separately.
The biggest source of energy in the United States of America is petroleum, including oil and natural gas. Together, they supply 65 percent of the energy we use. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, oil furnishes 40 percent of our energy, natural gas 25 percent, coal 22 percent, nuclear 8 percent, and renewables make up 4 percent.
The nation's more than two million miles of pipelines safely deliver trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and hundreds of billions of ton/miles of liquid petroleum products each year. They are essential: the volumes of energy products they move are well beyond the capacity of other forms of transportation. It would take a constant line of tanker trucks, about 750 per day, loading up and moving out every two minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to move the volume of even a modest pipeline. The railroad-equivalent of this single pipeline would be a train of 75 2,000-barrel tank rail cars every day. These alternatives would require many times the people, clog the air with engine pollutants, be prohibitively expensive and -- with many more vehicles on roads and rails carrying hazardous materials -- unacceptably dangerous.
Pipeline systems are the safest means to move these products. The federal government rededicated itself to pipeline safety in 2006 when the PIPES Act was signed. It mandates new methods and makes commitments for new technologies to manage the integrity of the nation's pipelines and raise the bar on pipeline safety.
PHMSA safety jurisdiction over pipelines covers more than 3,000 gathering, transmission, and distribution operators as well as some 52,000 master meter and liquefied natural gas (LNG) operators who own and/or operate approximately 1.6 million miles of gas pipelines, in addition to over 200 operators and an estimated 155,000 miles of hazardous liquid pipelines. This supply of energy has too often been disrupted by pipeline leaks that can pose a threat to public safety. In addition, damage from excavation is the leading cause for in-field utilities disruption.
For Pipeline Safety, research is sought toward the development of the following innovative technologies and methods in both hazardous liquid and or natural gas pipelines.
Areas of interest include but are not limited to:
